Dark City 2: Resurgence
by Maugan Ra
Summary: He thought they'd escaped. Escaped hell, escaped the past, escaped everything. He should have known better. Sonner or later, your past always catches up with you. All you can do is try to survive.
1. Chapter 1

Dark City 2

Lowest of the Low

My Lord

Here is the report you requested dealing with the latest arrivals to the underhive, the mysterious 'Phantoms' responsible for last weeks raid on the Counting house of Guild Finst.

The 'Phantoms' would appear to be a small band of mercenaries, men who would usually fight for anybody willing to pay their expensive price. These men are quite common to Hive Primus, particularly in the Under-hive, but the 'Phantoms would appear to be different. From what I can gain from numerous reports, the Phantoms enjoy a very strict moral code, and are utterly unwilling to participate in any operation they deem immoral. Indeed, three days before the counting house raid, the Phantoms were approached by a representative from Guild Finst, who sought to employ them as debt-collectors.

By all accounts, the Phantoms refused. The resultant confrontation ended with the Phantoms swearing revenge on the Guild, after Guild enforcers attempted to blackmail them into the post via hostage taking. It seems likely that the recent raid was the aforementioned revenge.

The Phantoms number only four men, and have utterly refused to allow any other bounty hunters or mercenaries to join them. They arrived in Hive Primus just over a month ago, and immediately set up shop in some of the roughest areas of the Underhive. This display of local knowledge leads me to believe that at least one of them is a native to Necromunda.

My suspicion was verified a few days ago. Based on security recordings from the counting house, I have positively identified one of the band as Jason Pollo, a bodyguard to the Heir of House Dalith, one of the minor noble houses, who vanished along with his charge over a year ago on a hunting expedition out-hive.

By all reports, the remaining three are almost certainly Hyrakans. Based on their efficient behaviour, I would guess that they are Imperial Guard deserters. Quite how or why these scum came to be travelling with the ex-bodyguard I cannot say. However, pict-recordings have revealed that all four of them bear elaborate, body-wide tattoos that xeno-savants have identified as usually employed by the Alien Eldar.

My Lord, based on these findings, I would recommend that a significant Arbites force be despatched to apprehend these men, chiefly on the charge of xeno-heresy. As ever, I leave the final decision in your Hands.

Your humble servant

Heronimus Styre

Scribe, Adeptus Arbites Precinct 42

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Cannis quietly surveyed the bar from behind his glare shades. Laid back in one of the corner seats, the casual observer might think he was asleep. In fact the first time he'd pulled this trick, a pickpocket had attempted to relieve him of his gun. Cannis had broken the mans arm as a warning. After that, nobody tried anything like that again. Seated at his table, equally relaxed, where the three men who'd gone through hell with him.

Pollo, the quiet, watchful Necromundan. Some had taken his calmness as a sign of weakness, and sought to mug him on their second night. All five of those men were now dead.

Wheln, the career soldier: Professional, efficient and, when the situation called for it, incredibly brutal. He'd buried the bodies of Pollo's assailants without batting an eyelid.

Ship, his Brother-in-law. Most given to emotion out of the four, and yet possessed of a way with words. It had been his refusal that had earned them the enmity of Guild Finst, and his blade that had ended the lives of two of the guilds hired thugs.

Together they'd survived in what could accurately be described as a living hell. For three months they'd been prisoners of the so-called Dark Eldar, and existed within Commaragh, the Dark City in the web-way. 'Lived' was too strong a word. They'd survived by simple chance; their captor, a powerful Eldar lord, had been impressed by their skills in the bloody arena fights and decided to purchase them. From there on in, they'd simply killed anyone in their way.

Six weeks ago they'd 'escaped'. After coming close to death at the hands of Imperial Space Marines, they'd been taken prisoner by the Imperium of Man. En route to the prison moon of Orax, they'd effected an escape from the heavily guarded prison ship.

They'd ended up here, in the famous underhive of Necromunda. Thus far, it's fearsome reputation appeared to be entirely deserved.

Right now, Cannis was using the pitch-black glare shades as a way to spy on a particular figure across the room. The subject of his observation didn't stand out in any way; in fact, there was nothing about him to suggest he was anything out of the ordinary. For Cannis, that was what made him suspicious. To him, it looked as though the figure was almost _trying_ to be inconspicuous. It was an effect totally unnoticeable to most, but you didn't spend three months in the Dark City without getting a feeling of when someone was trying to hide.

The figure was dressed in the traditional garb of a hired gun, as close to anything that class might call a uniform. A set of deep blue trousers were worn with a dingy white top, overlaid by tough leather webbing and a bandolier. His face was shielded by a pulled down cap, and a pair of combat boots adorned his feet. Just another specimen of under-hive trash, and yet… There was something horrifyingly familiar about the strangers gait.

Cannis glanced sideways and made eye contact with Pollo. The necromundan nodded at him and stood up. Cannis followed suit, and they both headed for the exit. Out of the corner of his eye, Cannis saw the stranger rise.

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The one who called himself Tonin watched the two mercenaries rise and head for the door. He waited a few moments, then stood. He stretched languorously before pacing towards the door. As soon as he exited, the full stench of the Underhive hit him in the face like a smack. Granted, the bar hadn't exactly been fragrant, but at least the candles had covered up the worst of the stink.

Tonin glanced left and right, trying to decide which way the mercenaries had gone. He caught a glimpse of a pair of backs rounding a corner up ahead, and paused to check his two bolt-pistols before pursuing. They were crude weapons, to be sure, but he knew from past experience how lethal they could be.

Moving with a stealth most humans couldn't even hope to emulate, Tonin slid around the corner, his eyes scanning the alleyway ahead for potential ambushes. He'd scarcely gone ten metres when a powerful arm wrapped itself around his throat.

A soft but infinitely scary voice whispered in his ear.

"Ma' ten' rashwe, Yaaraer?"

"_Looking for trouble, Eldar?"_


	2. Questions and 'answers'

_Wow, this has been a big break between my chapters. Sorry guys, but I was busy thinking out the plotline. And fighting Writer's block._

_Inquistor Soarn – Thanks for the review, and the vote of confidence. I just couldn't let them die, you know? This is my best idea ever._

_Potatos-ate-my-soul – Yet another vote of confidence. You'll see in this chapter, although I fully intend to work the craftworld Eldar in here somewhere._

_DocNitro – Yeah, but Necromunda is a whole different type of hell._

The Eldar reacted with all the quicksilver speed of its race. As soon as Cannis slipped his arm round its neck, the Eldar jerked its leg up and planted it in his groin. As he collapsed to the ground, wheezing, the xenos spun on one ankle and swiped for Cannis' neck. The human, somehow, managed to catch the blow before it landed, holding the arm in a grip like steel. The xenos reached for one of the holstered bolt-pistols, fully intending to blow this human's head off, when Pollo arrived.

A swift blow to the gut doubled the Eldar over, followed up by a knee to the face that sent it flying backwards. Cannis wrenched the alien's arm as it reeled, dislocating it at the very least. The xenos flopped to the ground, stunned. Pollo glanced at Cannis, who was picking himself up, before unsheathing his blade.

The alien stopped shock-still at the sight of the sword, its long blade flowing like molten silver. Slowly, it reached over with its one good arm and pressed something on it's belt. It began to rise to its feet when Ship and Wheln walked over, both with their own weapons up. Ship kicked the xenos brutally in the chest and it flopped back down. He looked at the prostrate alien and whispered in the Elder's tongue:

"_You want to tell us why we're being followed?"_

The Eldar spat on the ground at Ship's feet and got a kick in the face for his trouble. As the xenos collapsed back onto the ground, something small and metal glinted from its belt. Wheln bent over and tugged it free, before holding it up to his face. A small grey box, with a single blinking red light near the top. It was clicking quietly, and with a horrified feeling Wheln recognised it.

"Tracking device…"

The uniquely high-pitched scream of splinter fire filled the air.

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_Four hours later_

Cannis kept running, weaving desperately in an attempt to avoid the ferocious fire that chased after him. Pollo was with him, but they'd gotten separated with Ship and Wheln some time before. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to keep running for this long, but suspected that his Eldar-inflicted augmentations and sheer bloody-mindedness had both played a part.

They weaved into a small side alley, trying to lose their pursuers in the maze of interconnecting streets. A few underhive wretches peered out at them, but ducked back inside at the sight of the xenos who were pursuing them. The road up ahead was blocked by a collapsed building, but the two humans simply vaulted on top of it.

The screaming came again and Cannis winced as several shards of crystal sliced past his face. Then he leapt again, landing several streets away due to his more-than-human physiology. For a few moments he thought they'd evaded their pursuers, until a sharpened blade flashed past his throat. As the Eldar raised it's weapon for a second blow, Cannis ran him through with the psi-sword.

Something heavy suddenly came down on the back of his head, and he staggered sideways. The world span about him, and through pain-filled eyes he saw Pollo dispatch his assailant with merciless efficiency. The necromundan turned back to Cannis, but the Ex-guardsman could feel his grasp on reality slipping away. Far down the street, he could make out the lithe forms of more Eldar moving in for the attack, and realised that Pollo couldn't defeat them all, not if he was defending Cannis as well.

He was on the floor. How had that happened?

Pollo was trying to pick him up. Cannis shook his head.

"No. Run, you fool."

"No gakking way." Pollo snarled. The Eldar were almost upon them.

"Not a request, you idiot. Run, NOW!"

Pollo hesitated for a moment, then dropped Cannis on the ground. Cursing, hating himself, but knowing that there was no way of saving them both, he ran. The Eldar didn't bother to pursue. Cannis smiled in satisfaction, before the world rolled over and everything went black.

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The hunters stopped by the supine body. One of them reached down a slender hand and felt the soft motion of breath on his flesh. Alien eyes roved over the human, pausing on the elaborate tattoo's that marked one side of the face. Soft intakes of breath sounded, then a fast conversation in the Alien tongue. Finally, strong limbs wrapped themselves around the Human's wrists and hauled him up. This one would fetch a good price.

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	3. Enslaved

_Katz104327- So do I_

_Tankmaster- Wooh! I am apparently 'the master'. Now we'll see if I can live up to that title…_

_Inquisitor Soarn – Yeah, well, I had to post it or let it just gather dust due to the writer's block. I'll try to make my chapters longer._

_Mareg – yeah, that or 'practicing' with them…_

_marZisamaoggot – Piece of advice: Don't go around knocking your own talents. You'll never get anywhere. _

Enslaved

Something cold and wet was trickling down his throat. Cannis forced open one bleary eye and looked around. Another human was pressing a thin tube into his mouth, full of what appeared to be water. They were in a large cage, one born along on humming anti-grav units. With them were another dozen or so necromundans, all of them sitting around in various levels of despair. Walking along-side the cage were six oddly graceful figures that Cannis recognised with a start. They were undeniably Eldar, and they were festooned in the elaborate rows of spikes that signified slave-traders. Something in Cannis' stomach fell several miles. He was once again a prisoner of the Dark Eldar. At the thought, something triggered inside of him. An animal fear, coupled with a very Human desire to go no further along this path.

He rolled to one side, startling the Human who had been giving him the water. He cast about wildly, finally spotting the gleaming silver of his sword unsheathed in the hands of one of the Aliens. He stretched out a hand, and the psych-reactive metal immediately flew through the air towards him, passing straight between the bars of his cage. He seized it out of the air, feeling the familiar tingling warmth as the blade re-connected with its owner. He ignored the various yells of surprise around him and, taking the blade in a two handed grip, hacked savagely at the bars.

The sentient metal parted the bars on his second stroke, and he leapt out and into the middle of the Slavers. One of them came at him with a coiled whip, lashing out viciously, and Cannis disembowelled him with a swift slashing motion. He took off back the way they'd come, feeling the familiar blue mist of the Alien Webway coiling around his legs. No way in hell was he going back to the Dark City.

He almost made it.

Ten metres down the path and something small and sharp buried itself in his left shoulder. He stumbled, but kept on running. Two more flashed past him, before another three lodged themselves in his back. There was the strangest feeling, like icy water was filling up his insides. His legs were starting to feel very heavy, and he stumbled.

Another half-dozen impacts and he found himself on the floor, for the second time in as many hours. Blackness rolled over him and the world went away. The last thing he felt was a pointed boot kicking him in the chest.

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Pollo crouched down behind an old slag pile, peering around to see if there was anything he'd missed. Five metres away, both Wheln and Ship were hidden behind an old piece of industrial piping, scouting the area. Pollo panned his long barrelled weapon about, trying to get a feel for it. He really wasn't a gun man, but occasionally circumstances dictated that he engage an enemy at range. So, a few weeks after arriving, he'd commissioned one of the better under hive gunsmiths to make this weapon. It was a variant on the standard autogun, an almost obsolete type of weapon next to the more common laser-based weaponry. He'd chosen it because of where he was; a las-rifle was a good weapon, but a single shot lit up your firing position like a flashing neon sign. On Necromunda, you wanted to stay hidden as long as possible. Thus, all three men were armed with long-barrelled autoguns, fitted with bulky silencers and specialist custom rounds. As an added plus, they were equipped with high-quality sniper-scopes, 'liberated' from the PDF.

Satisfied that no-one was about to kill him, Pollo bent over to inspect the tracks he'd seen. Five sets of footprints; four armoured and striding, one staggering and being dragged. Maybe this was nothing, simply another abduction by foul hive-scum, but it was the only possible tracks they'd located today, and they were heading in the right direction. Pollo signalled to the others, and they all set off, hunting shadows. Five minutes later, their search bore fruit.

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Cannis came round slowly, his enhanced body fighting off the massive overdose of sedatives the alien's had hit him with. He flexed his arms weakly, not surprised top find himself heavily manacled and tied to the cage side. He opened his eyes, and immediately one of the other prisoners came over. Cannis looked him up and down, taking in the adolescent body, just starting to muscle out, and the new tattoos. Juve, he decided, some young fool who'd gone and been in the wrong place at the wrong time and got himself captured. Some part of him felt surprised at his own lack of sympathy, but it was quickly squashed under a wave of cold practicality.

The Juve looked down at him.

"Thank the Emperor, you're awake. Just one of those darts put me out for an hour."

Cannis shook his head, trying to clear it. "How long was I out?"

"Not long. But then, this place screws with time."

Cannis looked around and had to agree with the youngster's assessment. He recognised the surroundings; the light blue mist; the strange translucent walls that partially hid an ocean of madness. They were in the elder Webway, that strange extra-dimensional latticework of pathways that circumnavigated the galaxy. He switched his gaze to their captors, counting and assessing them. There were at least two dozen Eldar in view, garbed in the strange segmented armour of their kind, walking alongside five of the floating cages. He estimated that they had over a hundred captive humans. Most of the Eldar were armed with their signature crystalline rifles, presumably loaded with some form of sedative, but at least four were carrying the vicious nerve-whips that he remembered from the last time he was in this situation.

The Juve was obviously filled with both curiosity and fear, for he continued to ask questions. Cannis glanced around and saw that most of the conscious humans were listening in, obviously having appointed him as a leader after his dramatic escape attempt.

"What are they? Where are they taking us? What are they going to do with us?"

Cannis closed his eyes again. This was something he'd been dreading, for to give voice to the words would bring home their reality to him.

"They are xenos, the ones known as Eldar." He ignored the fearful intake of breath and continued. "They are taking us to their city, Commaragh, where they plan to sell us to the highest bidder. Some will go to the arena, to die in combat with the gladiators. Some will be sacrificed, to appease the Chaos god they worship. And some… some will be taken by the haemonculi, to be tortured and broken, before being sold again as body-slaves."

He felt something inside of him wrench loose at the thought. He was going to the Dark City, and there was no way in Hell they were going to let him escape a second time.

One of the nearby Eldar obviously took offence to the captives talking, and lashed out with his whip. The Juve fell screaming to the floor. In an instant, Cannis felt all his misery and despair boil up into rage. He leapt to his feet and seized hold of the whip, catching it on the insulated strip near the bottom, before yanking it out of the alien's grasp. The Eldar spluttered and pulled a pistol, but froze when Cannis snarled at him. None of the other humans understood the words, but they shrank back in fear at the sight of this mysterious warrior yelling at the xenos in their own language. Suddenly, several things connected together in the Humans minds. His strange body tattoos, his intimate knowledge of the Eldar, the way he'd fought and now, his knowledge of the foul language all linked together and pointed to one fact.

This man had been to the Dark City before. And was obviously in league with their captors.

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_Well, this should make up for the huge delay before the last chapter. Next time, Cannis returns to the Dark City, if he can survive his terrified companions._

_Maugen Ra_


	4. Return

_This has been a long time coming. Sorry, no personal review replys, but I'm writing this in my I.C.T lesson._

_As always, reviews are welcome._

The first warning Cannis had was the sharp whistling sound of a fist through the air. Acting on instinct, he spun, raising his arms in a crossed position and catching the incoming strike in the crock of his arms. Without thinking, he tightened his grip, spinning to one side as he did so. There was an ugly _crack_ of breaking bones, followed by a scream of pain. He dropped the arm and lashed out with one foot, catching his assailant in the back of the knees, dropping them. He turned; ready to defend himself against any further attacks.

The whole thing had lasted about a second.

As the adrenaline drained away, Cannis saw the terrified faces of his cell-mates, huddled against the far wall. He looked down at his whimpering assailant, recognising the young Juve who had first spoken to him. The boy was doubled over on the floor, clutching at his broken arm. Cannis felt the first pangs of guilt, just as the xenos got tired of his violence and flipped a switch on one side of the cage.

The Juve, Cannis and all the other prisoners were thrown violently through the air as five thousand volts of electricity surged into the cage floor.

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The harsh laugh of an Alien brought Cannis back round. The world reeled blearily in front of him for a moment, before everything resolved itself more clearly. He was propped up in a sitting position, facing a dark metallic wall. The room was about six foot each direction. The wall to his right featured a small window, through which shone a ruddy blood-light. He recognised that light, and looked away before his mind could interpret this.

The left-hand wall was a shimmering energy-field, presumably designed to administer a harsh shock on contact. Through this field Cannis could make out a distorted image of a lean figure.

With a soft sigh, the energy field disengaged, revealing a low metal door set in the wall. Through this came the figure he had glimpsed: a tall, slender Eldar. He recognised the strange pigeon-chest, the sallow skin, the disturbingly liquid way they moved. Worse, he recognised this particular Alien from his nightmares.

Slowly, fighting off the combined effects of the sedative darts and the electric shock, Cannis pulled himself to his feet, facing the waiting Alien.

"Jailor Kaboth. I was kind of hoping never to see your ugly mug ever again."

The Eldar grinned, a very unsettling sight, and replied. He didn't even seem surprised that Cannis had addressed him in his own language.

"I remember you. You made me a decent profit on wagers that day in the arena. I always found it hard to believe you were dead. And now you're mine again. Speaking of the Arena…"

Cannis growled. He would punch the Jailor, but he was sure that Kaboth could strike him with the neuro-whip at his waist before the blow would land. With a sigh of resignation, he allowed himself to be led out.

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The arming chamber was horribly familiar. The last time he had come here, he had done so in the company of over twenty other humans. Only he and three others had made it out alive.

This time he was alone, and he took the time to prepare himself for what undoubtedly lay ahead. The last time he had come here, he had been able to defeat one of the wyches in combat, and that had been before his augmentation. Now he was far more dangerous.

He looked over the wide selection of Melee weapons mounted on the wall. Eventually, he selected a pair of long daggers, each sharpened to the mono-molecular edge typical of Eldar weapons. He drew one across the palm of his hand as a test, appreciating the way that the near-invisible edge sliced his flesh with virtually no resistance. A brief line of crimson welled up along the cut, before turning rapidly brown. He swiped the blades through the air, getting a feel for them, and regarded the huge bronze doors with trepidation.

In the back of his mind, he wondered how many of the anxious eyes to stare at those gates had ever lasted long than an hour. Not many, he guessed. From beyond the gate, he could hear the almost tidal swell of yelling voices. That meant he would be going out soon.

Almost instantly, the great bronze doors ground open. Bright white light poured in, temporarily blinding him before his eyes adjusted in a second. The volume of chanting voices rose perceptibly, and his chest tightened.

He took a deep breath, and strode into the light.

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Pollo's feet made absolutely no sound as he crept along the strange tunnel. Thin blue mist coiled insidiously around his shins, and the chill ran all the way through his bones. Behind him, Wheln and Ship shuffled forwards, the nervous anticipation evident on their features. None of them wanted to be here, but Cannis was in trouble. The two brother-in-laws had known Cannis for years, had gone through the twin, but entirely different, hells of both life in the Imperial Guard and enslavement in Commaragh with him as their leader. Pollo knew that they regarded Cannis with a respect close to love.

And he himself, why was he here? Pollo wasn't entirely sure. He thought about this for a moment, but still wasn't entirely sure. Eventually, he decided that Cannis was virtually a brother to him. In Necromunda, you never left a brother behind. The hive-city was as close a place to hell as he could imagine (barring the place that they were now, ironically, trying o find) and growing up in such a place forged an unshakable bond between the inhabitants. Oh, sure, they would cheerfully shoot each-other for a few credits, or murder anybody from the next street over, but they would never, ever, betray a blood-brother.

That was why he was here. He and Cannis had survived both Commaragh and Necromunda, and an experience like that bound men together more surely than any oath.

He squinted along the tunnel, trying to make out which way it was going. This whole place messed with your mind, and after a few hours traversing the Webway's strange passages, he only had the vaguest sense of direction.

He looked sideways (or at least, what he thought was sideways) and peered through the translucent edge of the tunnel. Something large, dark, and equipped with far too many eyes returned the glance before swimming/shifting/sliding on. He shivered. That could also have something to do with the inherent sense of wrongness about this place.

They moved on.

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Cannis strode out into the arena with a confidence he did not feel. High above him, arranged in serried rows around the edge of the main pit, thousands of aliens yelled out at his emergence.

His opponent was waiting for him. It was a female Eldar, dressed in the skimpy clothes of the wyches, balancing on one foot with a grace that made Cannis feel slow and stupid. Her pale alabaster flesh was perfectly smooth, and she was beautiful.

He recognised her, and felt his heart sink. This was going to be painful. He had fought this wych before, had even talked with her on an almost-friendly level. He even knew her name.

"Hello Alshin."

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_Wow, this has been half-written for such a long time now._

_As always, reviews are welcome._


	5. Chapter 5

Alshin's eyes widened slightly, but other than that she gave no sign that she'd heard him. Cannis shrugged, and settled back into a defensive stance, crocking his arms in front of him, feeling the weight of the blades. He sighed slowly, blocking out the rising crescendo of the audience. The novelty of a trained slave in the arena was sending the alien viewers wild, and they started to drum out a steady beat with their feet, reminding the opponents of the passage of time. Cannis ignored it, and eyed up Alshin, seeking the slightest betraying twitch that could give him the vital half-second warning.

Suddenly, he saw it. The movement was ever so minute, but he still caught it. Alshin's leg bent just a miniscule fraction, just enough to coil up ready for a leap. Cannis was already moving. As the Eldar Wych bounded towards him, Cannis responded with a powerful leap of his own. Fast as quicksilver, the two gladiators sprinted towards each-other, their weapons held ready. Then they collided.

As the aliens often remind humans, Eldar senses are amongst the fastest in the galaxy. When an Eldar is concentrating hard on something, as the members of the audience were, there is virtually no possibility that they will miss the slightest detail. None-the-less, when Cannis and Alshin collided in the exact middle of the arena floor, none of the spectators could follow precisely what happened next. There was a whirlwind of blades, a series of ringing tones, and then the opponents were past each-other, racing to opposite sides of the arena.

Cannis skidded to a stop, spinning carefully on his back heel to face the wych. He checked himself over; knowing that in the heat of combat, serious injuries can go un-noticed. Thankfully, he appeared to be unharmed, except for a single long, thin cut running up the outside of his left arm. The wound was burning like fire, but Cannis decided that it was probably non-fatal. He knew of the venoms the Eldar were renowned for coating their weapons with, but figured that a gladiator wouldn't use them, for fear of ending the match too early. If nothing else, the wychs delighted in dragging things out.

He mentally re-adjusted his attitude. Alshin hadn't been expecting him to attack, and it was only that minor distraction that had allowed him to get away with such a light injury. He had every confidence that she'd managed to read his style in that first pass, and as a result he could count on a far more serious injury should he attempt that again. Time for a more defensive strategy.

Once again, he raised his twin blades in front of him, but this time he didn't move from his spot. Alshin paced closer, steadily, and Cannis was gratified to see that she, too, bore a shallow cut along her stomach. His opponent began to circle him warily, like a predator stalking its prey, and he rotated slowly to keep her in his vision. The crowd was yelling themselves hoarse, but Cannis barely heard them. His attention was firmly focused on Alshin.

He spotted once again the slight twitch in her foreleg that signified an imminent leap, and tensed himself.

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Although you wouldn't know it to look at her face, Alshin was uncertain. She had recognised the opponent that had been selected for here the second he had walked out into the arena. And she knew that he recognised her. So now, the question took on a new urgency. What was she going to do?

She knew the rules of the arena. This was a death match, and there was no way to leave it until at least one of the combatants lay dead. And yet, this was no normal opponent. The human known as Cannis was far faster, stronger and deadly than any normal human. This was not an opponent that she could toy with. To do so would inevitably result in her death, if the human was anywhere near as skilled as she remembered.

She wondered whether her father, Khulan, was in the crowd, and what he thought of the transpiring events. Khulan was a very powerful Dracon, second in command of the Black Heart Kabal, the most powerful faction within Commaragh. His power was almost limitless, but there were some areas where no amount of influence could reach. The Eldar society was based almost entirely around pain and suffering, and as a result the arena was almost sacred ground. There was nothing he could do to intervene.

The hiss of a blade warned her that she had been reminiscing for too long, and she graceful leapt backwards out of the range of the strike. Any other human opponent would have pressed his apparent advantage, blundering forwards in an attempt to keep his opponent of the back foot, and Alshin would have taken advantage of that to finish him. Not Cannis. He was canny enough to ignore the lure and settle back into a defensive position.

This was a worrying development. Apparently the human could read her moves as easily as she could read his. That took away one of the main advantages that she had possessed over virtually every other opponent in the arena.

Regardless of this, she knew that she had to keep up some form of offensive. Almost subconsciously, she began to weave the twin blades in her hands in a mesmerising pattern, slowly advancing towards the human. She kept her gaze on his eyes, hoping to see them focus on the spinning blades and away from her. No such luck. Well, she thought philosophically, desperate times call for desperate measures.

In a single movement, she enacted her hastily formed plan. With a sharp movement, she sent her left hand blade flying through the air towards Cannis, before taking her remaining sword in a two handed grip. Cannis ducked under the spinning blade, and Alshin moved forwards.

Her blades where about half a foot longer than the human's, and this enabled them to be wielded as either knives or swords, using a one or two-handed grip respectively. She swept her blade low, at around knee height, putting all her weight behind the potentially crippling blow. Cannis, still stooped from avoiding her thrown knife, was left with no choice but to leap forwards to avoid the attack.

Just as she had planned.

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Cannis threw himself headlong, desperate to avoid the scything blade, and immediately knew that it was a mistake. Swift as lightening, the Eldar Wych swiftly changed her stance, bringing up one armoured kneecap to impact with his face. The blow was stunning.

When his vision finally cleared and his mind stopped shrieking in pain long enough to access the situation, he saw that he was in very bad straights indeed. While he had been lying stunned, Alshin had recovered her second sword and kicked his own out of reach. Now he was lying on his back, with one sword hovering a millimetre from his jugular and the other levelled at his eye.

Alshin smiled down at him, revealing teeth more akin to fangs, and looked off to the side of the arena. Without moving his head, Cannis followed her gaze. His eyes alighted on the head box, the plush area where the most important viewer sat and watched the bloodshed. He recognised the figure standing there. Even though the box was over a hundred metres away, and shadowed by an overhanging canopy, even though his eyes were blurry with suppressed pain, there was no mistaking the figure that waited there.

Asdrubal Vect, Lord of the Black Heart, raised one armoured arm. Cannis could see that his thumb was held parallel to the ground, and he recognised the universal ritual that was taking place. If Vect pointed his thumb up, Cannis would live. If he did not, he would die. It was faintly absurd, the man thought, that his life was to be decided by such an insignificant gesture. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he could make out a second Eldar stand up and whisper something to the dread lord.

The hand moved, and Alshin struck. His sight flowed away.

888

Pollo stood perfectly still, struggling to master his emotions. Before him was a sight he had hoped with all his heart he would never again have to look upon. He was standing in the mouth of one of the webway 'tunnels', looking out over the city of Commaragh.

Hundreds of cruel metal towers thrust upwards, interconnected by dozens of arching walkways, set against a blood-red backdrop. Each towering spire was adorned with thousands of hanging corpses, alternately incarcerated within iron cages or dangling from barbed cables. High overhead, the deceptively frail looking membrane of the webway surface stretched to form a gigantic cavern. Beyond, a rolling madness awaited them, punctuated by the occasional skittering shapes of ethereal claws. Daemons, Pollo knew, foul occupants of the warp seeking a way to breach the protective barrier and feast upon the depraved souls within.

Even from where he stood, Pollo could hear the screams. They were never-ending, a constant cacophony of terror that echoed throughout the twisting streets. The dark Eldar had built their society on suffering, using it almost as a currency like Imperial credits, so to them the city probably sounded like a bustling centre of commerce. Interspaced amongst the terror-screams, Pollo's augmented hearing could pick out the subtly different sounds of death-shrieks. They sounded almost as frequently as the terror sounds, and Pollo knew that for every one of his ever-quickening heartbeats that sounded, a dozen lives had met their violent ends in the metropolis before him.

Wheln and Ship had moved up as he stood frozen, and he heard them both blaspheme softly. He could not believe what it was they were about to do. They had only just escaped this place last time with their sanity intact, and that was for the simple reason that the Eldar had believed them dead. Now they where about to perform an act which even the most demented follower of the ruinous powers would judge mad.

They were about to return to the Dark City, of their own free will.

_Emperor save me,_ thought Pollo, _I truly am insane._


	6. Reunion

It was not a gentle awakening. He decided that that might have something to do with the sharpened blade that was slowly gliding over his bare chest. Cannis jerked his head up with a cry of pain, and abruptly the knife went away. It was replaced by an armoured hand, one that seized him by the chin and held him upright. Two pitiless black eyes stared into his own, their gaze cruel and accusing.

"Why did you come back?"

The voice was soft and sibilant, almost like the hiss of some desert reptile. Cannis recognised the voice and the eyes. For a moment, he wondered how he could understand the voice at all, given that it was defiantly not speaking in Low Gothic, but then he remembered. He and his friends had used the translators to learn the Eldar tongue, just in case they should ever need it and be without the alien translating devices.

With a great amount of effort, he managed to hiss back a response.

"Not by choice…"

The hand released him and immediately Cannis sagged. He could tell now that he was suspended from the ceiling, his arms locked into a pair of metal cuffs above his head. Most of his tattered necromundan clothing had been removed, and he was now clothed only in a pair of pale brown trousers. In front of him stood the one Eldar he had dreaded meeting more than any other.

It was the Dracon Khulan, the same evil bastard who had captured Cannis and his men in the first place, who had later purchased them after their first combat in the arena. The same evil creature that had employed another to burn away Cannis' humanity; to augment his physiology with arcane xeno-tech.

It was his old owner. And he did not look happy.

Khulan was wearing the standard segmented mesh armour of the Eldar, complete with the golden trimmings that denoted his rank. In one pale hand he clasped the thin blade that he'd used to waken Cannis, its mono-molecular edge stained with blood. The other hand rested upon a leather holster, from which protruded the butt of one of the Eldar's feared splinter weapons. His pale face was under lit by a sickly green glow, and in it Cannis could read nothing but cruelty and malice.

He realised abruptly that his day was about to get a lot, _lot_ worse.

888

Pollo stilled his breathing, pressing his back into the cold metal wall of the alleyway. In the next street, a party of Eldar warriors prowled by, their long-barrelled rifles sweeping from side to side. They were hunting, Pollo realised with a thrill of fear, and immediately the conclusion sprang to mind that they had to be looking for him.

_Wait, _his instincts said. _Calm down. You don't know that they're looking for you._ Pollo had long ago learnt to rely on his instincts. They had been sharpened by a life-time of hunting his foes in that living hell the Necromundans termed simply 'the under-hive'. Granted, next to Commaragh, Necromunda had been an idyllic paradise, but the principles should still be the same.

Further down the ally-way he was aware of Wheln and Ship tucking themselves into the shallow niches that seemed to feature in virtually every ground-level wall in this city. Their breathing was tensed and scared, but they were both hardened soldiers and, more-recently, mercenaries, so Pollo was confident that neither of them was planning to do anything stupid.

His instincts proved to be correct as the party of Eldar came level with their alleyway, then prowled straight past. He waited a few moments to be absolutely sure that this wasn't some kind of feint, before allowing himself to breath once more. He hadn't realised that he'd been holding it.

With careful stealth, Pollo moved out of his hiding place and re-joined his companions at the next junction. They had penetrated about a kilometre into the city, as far as they could judge from the twisted labyrinth of alleyways and bridges. Personally, Pollo believed that their progress had been nothing short of miraculous thus far, and that it could only be a matter of time before some alien bystander saw and identified them.

Wheln was the first to speak.

"There is no way we're going to get much further like this. That was just too close."

Ship nodded. "All it will take is one patrol to stumble across us and we're dead. Besides, we have no idea where the sarge is."

Pollo shook his head. To him, the answer was obvious. "There is only one place that he'll have been taken. The Arena."

He jerked his head down the street, from where they could hear a strange sound. It took the men a few moments to realise what it was, but suddenly it clicked. It was the sound of a thousand voices, all raised in one roar of bloodlust.

"Let's go."

888

He just wouldn't stop with the knife. Cannis screamed again as the blade danced across his chest. The pale green liquid covering the blade seeped into his wounds, and burnt him alive.

His screams increased in intensity.

"Why did you not return? What happened to you after the raid?"

The questions were ceaseless, and no matter what he said the Eldar just wouldn't _stop._

"They captured us! Damn you… they captured us! I woke up on a prison ship!"

"I think not. They would have seen your tattoos. You killed several marines. They would have executed you."

Another careful incision. Another cry of pain, although this one was less shrill. The Eldar stopped in surprise, before smiling wickedly. The smile was entirely unsettling, mainly because an Eldar face was structured slightly differently to a human one. The smile made Cannis nauseous. When the Alien spoke, his voice was thick with sick satisfaction.

"Of course… Your augmentations give you a greater resilience to pain. Your body is adapting to the poison. However, I have plenty of different varieties."

He held up a second dagger, this one glistening with a dark blue liquid. Cannis moaned.

"Please… no."

Khulan was just moving in with the knife again when the chamber door opened. The Eldar looked around, and smiled at the newcomer. It was Alshin. The dim red light of the chamber reflected off of her alabaster skin, giving her the look of a marble statue.

"Hello father." Her voice was cold and deadly, filled with just as much venom as the Dracon. Khulan simply smiled even more (that same unsettling grin) before turning back to his captive.

"I have an idea. Seeing as my daughter defeated you in the arena, our laws state that your fate is in her hands. Therefore, what happens to you now depends entirely on her. What do you think, daughter of my heart? Could you find a use for this wretch?"

Alshin also smiled, and Cannis looked away in fear. Her voice was slick, and filled with amusement.

"Well, I could always use some diversion in the evenings. However father, I think you will find that this very capable 'wretch' has already set about taking control of his own fate. Isn't that right, Cannis?"

During the brief moment that Khulan had turned away, Cannis had altered his stance ever so slightly. It was a miniscule adjustment, but the change had allowed some of the acid in his cuts to start trickling down his arms. The pain was excruciating, but he bore it grimly. His effort was rewarded with the slight sizzling noise that heralded the acid meeting his cuffs.

They were still far too strong for an ordinary human to break but, as Khulan himself had pointed out; Cannis was far from an ordinary human. With a mental impulse, Cannis triggered the augmented glands that the Eldar surgeon had implanted so long ago, flooding his system with adrenaline.

One mighty heave and the cuffs broke with a discordant chime. Cannis leapt at the Dracon.


	7. Hitting the fan

Hitting the fan

Pollo didn't like this. He had been so sure that Cannis was at the arena, still was in fact, but getting to him was becoming more and more difficult by the second. They couldn't exactly stroll down the main boulevards, and had thus been forced to slip through what passed for backstreets in Commaragh. There were few more dangerous places in existence. The companions had already spotted at least three of the shadow-skinned mandrakes slinking away, and had had to redirect fairly far west (or was it east? Time wasn't the only thing the webway messed with…) to avoid a gang dispute closer to a pitched battle. They were still several miles from the stadium, as best as they could judge, and Pollo reckoned it was going to take them at least another two 'hours' to get there at their current pace. He sighed. There was nothing to do except press on.

They almost made it.

About a mile from the stadium, they ran into trouble. They were carefully crossing a small intersection, a tiled square where three of the convoluted alleyways met up, when a shot pinged off of the wall next to them.

Pollo reacted instantly, drawing his sword and rolling over into cover behind a carved stone sphere. It had been worked into the likeness of screaming faces, and Pollo looked away with a shudder. Wheln and Ship had pulled back into the alleyway as soon as they'd heard the shot, and both were now ensconced within the small recesses, arming their customised rifles.

With loud whoops and catcalls, over a dozen slender figures dropped into the square. Pollo cursed, realising that he'd forgotten to check above them before quitting cover. They were all Eldar, and at first glance Pollo thought there was something wrong with them. Compared to all the other Aliens he'd seen, these ones looked small and stringy. Then he realised, they were youths. Probably still older than him, what with the Eldar lifespan, but youths all the same. They were all flashing curved knives, except the leader, who was waving a splinter pistol in the air.

"Come on out, little humans…" Their voices were taunting and cruel.

"We promise not to hurt you… much." They all laughed at this, baying like jackals. Pollo looked back at his companions and shook his head. They both stowed their rifles. These may be Aliens, but you didn't shoot children.

Pollo stood up, his sword raised. The Eldar laughed in delight, thrilled that their prey wasn't cowardly. The leader grinned nastily.

"You're breaking the rules; human… you're supposed to be running. Maybe if we gave you some encouragement."

Pollo realised in that split second what was about to happen, and started to move. The youth with the pistol aimed and fired, sending a hail of splintered crystal shards straight towards Pollo. He was no longer there.

The Eldar had a split second to realise that somehow, this _human _had actually managed to dodge a splinter round, before Pollo was in front of him. The quicksilver sword flashed and the youth staggered back, yowling at clutching at the stump of his arm. The sword in Pollo's hand was vibrating, letting out a soft keening at the taste of blood, and he raised it into a guard position.

With roars of affronted rage, the other youths threw themselves at him. Things became close up and deadly. Pollo knocked aside the first thrust to come at him, and used his momentum to spin himself into the centre of the pack. Someone punched at him, which simply allowed him to pull them into an arm lock. He used the leverage to lift himself from the ground, snapping a sideways kick and breaking the arm at the same time.

Wheln and Ship moved in. Wheln kept his sword sheathed, meeting one of the Eldar fist to fist in a furious blur of arms. He grabbed the alien by the arms and used it as a vaulting post, launching himself at another enemy. His opponent went over backwards, hard, and didn't get up.

Ship isolated three of the Eldar from the pack and duelled with them all simultaneously. He was a whirling blur of silver, keeping three fast opponents at bay at the same time. Then they were two, the third toppling to the floor with its hamstrings sliced.

Pollo leapt into the air, kicking off of one Eldar with a crack of bone to impale another through the chest with his blade. Pollo somersaulted over his head, pulling his blade free and sending his opponent to the ground in one fluid motion. He even managed to snap a neck with his raised feet as he came down. He landed cat-like on the balls of his feet, a moment before the three corpses thumped to the floor around him.

The trio had learned this method of fighting in the underhive. It was not very well known, but near to where they had set up shop as mercenaries, a society of, well, 'warrior monks' practiced their own form of martial arts. They were a hell of a lot more dangerous than they sounded, and maintained that in a fight, you used every possible moment to disable your opponent. This, along with their tough physical regime, had resulted in a form of combat that was almost gymnastics.

Somehow Cannis had managed to get his team into a week long initiation course. Pollo had wondered about that, but decided it was better not to ask. Now, it appeared that he might not get the chance.

The few remaining Eldar backed off in fear, their eyes wide from the spectacle of three humans defeating almost a dozen Eldar in the space of a few seconds. Pollo considered going for them, but refrained. He still had some honour. The second the youths realised this they were gone, fleeing with shrieks of terror.

Pollo shook his head. If ever there was a way to draw attention to oneself that was it.

888

Cannis threw himself forwards with a roar of rage. Khulan staggered back in shock, and then in pain as Cannis broke his fragile nose with one meaty fist. That was all he had time for as Alshin moved in.

Cannis knew immediately that Alshin was a far more dangerous proposition hand-to-hand. He narrowly blocked a chisel-like palm as it thrust at his neck, before replying with a salvo of rapid blows. Alshin blocked them all, twisting her body to deflect the power away from her and putting him in danger of overbalancing.

He adjusted his balance, striking several times at weaknesses in her guard but finding none. In response, the lithe young wych leapt for him, driving him back with a hail of airborne kicks. Cannis caught one of her scything feet and forced her over backwards, only to see her land the unexpected throw easily. This was going to be difficult.

Lying prostrate on the floor, Khulan blinked tears from his eyes and stared up at the duelling pair. They moved so fast, like lightening. Khulan knew that no mere human should be able to match blows with his daughter, even with the augmentations that he'd paid to have administered. After all, she had been trained by… Well, she was formidable. Only one man, one _creature,_ was supposed to be able to match her like this.

The revelation stunned his already reeling mind. The words slipped out, before he could clamp his lips shut.

"Gayaer… Lye nuquernuva sen e dagor…"

"_The Dread one… He who dances on the bones of time…"_


	8. Everything

Ascension

Cannis kept fighting, utilising every last iota of his speed and skill. It still wasn't enough, and he was horribly aware that a single slip or miscalculation on his part would result in near instant death. Alshin didn't so much appear to move as to flow, sliding from one move into the next without a single moments pause or hesitation. She was beautifully deadly, and as he struggled Cannis suddenly realised that her attacks and her parries, her every move was part of one long, elaborate dance. Where had she learnt to fight like that?

There was a curious sensation in his chest, an almost pressurised feeling. He was feeling more and more like a balloon, swelling with the inflow of power. The feeling was distracting, and he was also aware that such distraction could very easily prove fatal in a clash like this. He'd forgotten almost entirely about Khulan, too intent on surviving the barrage of attacks from the wych facing him.

This bloody pressure…

888

Pollo pulled on his sword, sliding it from the ribs of the Eldar sentry with one practised motion. The time for being subtle was past, and from the nightmare city behind him he could hear the shouts and yells of a fast approaching search party. It would appear that the youths he had slain had been the relatives of someone rather powerful.

Pollo checked rapidly that there was nobody else about before leaning back over the balcony railing. The bar had been carved into the impression of bones. Strange, he thought, how a tensed mind will take note of the smallest things.

Below him, Wheln and Ship clung to the edge of the tower like limpets. At Pollo's signal, they both pulled themselves up and onto the platform, using the carved surface of the building for footholds. Both landed in combat ready crouches, neither willing to drop their guard in a place like this.

Pollo wondered why they were here. Up until a few moments ago, the three of them had been dead-set on reaching the Arena. Yet the sword in his grasp had suddenly warmed and started to keen, and he had _known_ that his friend was incarcerated in the tower. Wheln and Ship had obviously felt it too, for neither had questioned the way he had suddenly changed direction and scaled the tower.

There was an odd feeling in the air. Ever since the three had entered this city, he had slowly become used to the creeping unease, the paranoia that they were being watched, and the feeling that something horrible was going to happen very shortly. This feeling was different, though; it almost felt like everything was becoming charged. Everything felt almost greasy, and Pollo had the strangest feeling that every cell in his body was picking up an electrostatic charge. What in the hell could cause that?

888

Cannis grunted in pain as one of Alshin's blows slipped past his guard and jarred off his ribs. The blow had been angled perfectly, and Cannis fought to remain concentrated as every bone in his body seemed to vibrate. It wasn't easy, especially with the additional feeling of pressure inside of him. He felt like he would pop at any moment.

Maybe he'd let it out, just for a moment. Just long enough to let him concentrate on the fight. In fact, now that he thought about it, he couldn't for the life of him think why he was suppressing it in the first case. He had such a strong feeling that if he stopped resisting, wondrous things would happen.

He let go. Any second now…

Alshin took advantage of his distraction and stepped inside his guard, hitting him squarely in the solar plexus with one dainty fist. The breath whooshed out of his body, and Cannis found himself suddenly overwhelmed with too much pain to remember to resist.

He let go.

888

Pollo fell to the floor, clutching his head. For the briefest second, everything went transparent. He could see right through the door balcony door he'd been approaching, like it was perfect glass. There was only the faintest shadow to indicate that it was there at all, almost like the flesh on an X-ray picture.

He looked, and found that he could see every last person within the buildings. He could see every bone they had and hear their every heartbeat. He looked down, and realised that he could see straight through his own flesh. The bone of his arm was laid bare, and he could pick out every last string of muscle, every artery and vein and capillary with microscopic precision. The sight was disturbing, and he looked away.

He looked around at the city of Commaragh, seeing it as a huge mass of lights, all piled together in what he assumed where the towers. So many of them appeared dirty and worn, and with a start of terror he realised that he was seeing the souls of all the Eldar in Commaragh, stained with rage and malice and sadistic cruelty. He looked upwards.

The thin skein of the webway still looked as semi-solid as ever, but it was what was beyond it that scared Pollo the most. Every last warp-thing, every last daemon and devil and abomination was recoiling. Several almost appeared to be… genuflecting. What in the Emperor's name could cause a daemon to offer praise?

He knew what he had to do to know, and yet he couldn't. It would be such a simple thing, to turn his head and look back into the tower, to see and understand. Such a simple thing, but it was the hardest act Pollo could think of. And yet, it would appear he had no choice in the matter.

Almost against his own will, Pollo turned his head. He tried closing his eyes, but found that his eyelids had become as transparent as the rest of him. There was a golden light, spilling from the centre of the tower and, like a moth drawn to a flame, Pollo _looked._

And understood.

888

It felt wondrous. Cannis could feel the light pouring from him, illuminating his body from within, and he loved it. He could see everything. He looked at Alshin, and saw everything about her. He saw her past, her present and her future all at once. He could see every last cell in her body, read her every thought. He looked into her past and saw turmoil. He saw a journey in the webway. He saw a meeting with dancers, and a prophecy made. He saw her preparations, her training and lessons. He saw her return to Commaragh and he saw the expression her father had worn.

He looked at Khulan and read him like a book. He saw his reaction, his scepticism and his final acceptance of his daughter's tale. He saw knowledge about himself, but disdained to read it. He already knew what it said. With a whim he healed the bones of the Dracon's nose, realising that Khulan had just been playing his part in the Great Story.

He looked outwards, seeing the entirety of the tower all at once, from every possible angle and in every spectrum. He located three souls standing on a balcony, and smiled as he recognised the minds of his friends. Their loyalty and courage brought a tear to his eye. He saw the mind of a guard, drawing a bead on them from a higher balcony, and with a single thought reached out and crushed every bone in his body.

He looked out into the warp, seeing every last daemon and devil staring back at him, and he saw the recognition in their 'eyes'. He looked at the four greatest of their number, and he heard their names toiling around in his head. Not their common names, but their true ones: the identity by which a man might truly know and thus control them. They shrank back, and he basked in the light of their fear.

He reached out into the cosmos, and found those he had been seeking the most. The dancers, the jesters: the servants of the Laughing One. He touched their minds, and recoiled from the absence he felt in some. Every last one turned and looked towards him, and every last one of them laughed. They laughed with joy, with satisfaction, with achievement.

With nervousness.

Cannis saw everything, and he knew everything. And, just as he knew the names of every person in the cosmos, he knew what would soon happen. A human mind could not contain this level of knowledge for long, not without burning out. So he took it, all of it, and he hid it. He hid it deep below his own consciousness, below his emotions, below his very primal instincts.

Then, he allowed the darkness to take him.


	9. Explanations

Explanations

_Wow, this was a long time in coming. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and I can now confirm that I have the plotline of this story totally worked out. I even made notes, which is unheard of for me. So now I know exactly where this is going. Finally._

Explanations

Cannis opened one bleary eye and looked around. He could tell at once that this was a much nicer place to be waking than the last time he'd regained consciousness. The walls were a pale, inoffensive grey and totally bereft of any gruesome ornamentation. He was actually lying on a bed, a soft cotton one at that, which made a fine replacement for the barbed chains he had previously endured. Anybody would think that he wasn't in Commaragh at all…

With a sudden surge of hope he leapt to his feet, before collapsing on the floor. He groaned lowly, trying to work out why he felt so utterly _drained._ This was more than simple fatigue; it almost felt like his very soul had been leeched from him.

He put that disturbing notion to one side and clambered up from the floor again, this time being sure to hold onto something first. He looked around himself, and realised that he was in a small square room. Aside from the plain, unassuming bed, the only object in the room was a black metal table. There was a grey pitcher on it, filled to the brim with what looked like water. Cannis suddenly realised how thirsty he was, but paused anyway. Would it be wise to drink anything in this place? Then again, he reasoned, why would he Eldar give him a comfortable bed then poison his water?

Without giving himself time to reconsider, he snatched up the vessel and downed half of its contents in one gulp. The liquid was pleasantly cold and sharp on his tongue, and he drank the rest. He looked around once more, and noticed that there was a small window set into one wall. He considered looking outside, but decided that he didn't need to. The blood-light that he could see shining in was confirmation enough.

He flopped back down onto the bed, grateful that the room was at least equipped with sound-proofing. Then his drained body took hold and he slept.

888

Pollo advanced carefully down the hallway, his gun cradled in his arms and one finger in the trigger. Since the…'Event' that they'd been party to outside, he couldn't deny that he felt distinctly uneasy. That terrible energy, he was sure, had come from Cannis, and he had to know what exactly it was that his honour brother was doing. Now more than ever he was sure that they had to locate Cannis and get him out of this city. Such power, in the hands of the Dark Eldar… well, Pollo just knew that their mission had taken on a critical importance.

Wheln and Ship were level with him, both of them trusting to their rifles within the building. Pollo knew that it was something of a minor miracle that no-one had stumbled across them yet, but he also knew that there was a high probability that they would very soon. When that happened, he wanted to be able to silence whoever found them quickly, and from a distance. The swords were all very well, but even the team's enhanced physiology wouldn't allow them to keep up with a fleeing Eldar.

Of course, the one thing Pollo could not possibly know was that every Eldar in the building was well aware of their presence, and were keeping away from them simply on the orders of their lord and master. Therefore, Pollo could not have been more shocked when Khulan suddenly stepped around the corner ahead of them, a sardonic grin on his face.

"You're going the wrong way, you know." The alien's voice was slick and cold, like water down the spine.

All three of the men knew Khulan on sight, from his armour or his face or even the way he walked. All three fingers closed on their triggers, utterly unwilling to allow this demon, this bane of their lives to escape once again. All three guns spat, sending silenced rounds directly towards the head of the alien. And all three rounds passed straight through his smirking visage, pinging off the far wall in welters of sparks.

"Dear me…" reproved the Dracon, "that wasn't very polite know, was it?" The cold smile on his face hadn't faded; indeed it seemed to be even more amused than before.

"Hologram…" The word slipped from Wheln's lips, along with a soft blasphemy from his brother-in-law. All three men turned as one, starting to sprint back the way they'd come. They all knew now that the Eldar were aware of their presence, and none of them doubted that even now, kill-teams of warriors would be moving in to terminate them.

With a soft hiss, great metal barriers slid from the walls, dividing the corridor into multiple segments. Pollo skidded to a stop and wrenched out his sword. The quicksilver blade rebounded from the barrier with a discordant chime, and Pollo screamed in burning pain. Behind them, the faintly shimmering form of Khulan grew closer. His voice was mildly taunting now.

"Did you think I would prepare a trap that you could simply cut your way out of? My friends, you insult my intelligence."

Filled with a burning rage, Pollo turned and spat on the floor at Khulan's feet. He was trapped, and was more than likely about to be brutally murdered. Unless, of course, the Eldar had plans for them beyond simple death. Knowing them, they probably did. That thought stuck horribly in Pollo's mind. The Dark Eldar were well renowned for their sadistic nature, and the more Pollo thought about it the more likely it seemed to him that Khulan wouldn't let them simply die. He probably had their own torture chambers already picked out.

With that thought in mind, Pollo raised his quicksilver blade once again. Instead of attempting to strike the hologram, he reversed his grip, letting the tip of blade rest on his own chest, directly over his heart. Wheln and Ship gasped, but Khulan simply grinned wider. Pollo spat out his final words with all the venom he could muster.

"You will not take me alive, xenos filth."

Suddenly something appeared to occur to the Dracon and the smile dropped from his face. He was suddenly serious, quite devoid of all his usual cruelty. When he next spoke, his voice was filled with what even Pollo could recognise as sincerity.

"Don't. You have a purpose here, and your death would hardly serve it."

Pollo glared at the hologram. Either this was a fantastically skilful ruse, or Khulan was actually being serious. Intrigued despite himself, Pollo lowered the blade.

"What purpose? And why should I care?"

The Eldar's voice was calm and matter-of-fact, but Pollo could still just about read his emotions. What he saw there was the one thing he least expected: fear. _He needs us alive, and for more than his own amusement, _Pollo thought, _and he's terrified of the consequences should we die._ It was a stunning idea.

"Human, if you don't survive now to fulfil your purpose, there is a very real chance that your Imperium will fall. Overnight. Everything in the galaxy will die."

Pollo blinked in shock. That sort of importance was entirely unexpected. The Imperium fall? Impossible. The Imperium of man was simply too vast to fall. Billions of soldiers, Trillions of citizens… hell, they even had over a million Space Marines! Beyond that, there was no way over a million worlds could all simultaneously be lost! Was there?

He hid away his shock and glared at the Alien.

"Impossible. The Imperium is too large to fall. Uncounted numbers of Aliens have been trying for ten thousand years to topple the God-Emperor! We could lose a thousand worlds at a stroke, and still have over ninety-nine percent left intact!"

Khulan smiled, but there was a hint of nervousness in it. "Human, I did not say your every world would fall, just that your Imperium would. What if every world suddenly lost contact with every other?"

Pollo snorted in disgust. Such an Idea was ludicrous. "You must know that's impossible. The only way the Imperium would collapse like that would be if the Warp got sealed off!"

Khulan smiled, and this time Pollo was totally sure that he had read his emotions right. There was an almost twisted sense of satisfaction.

"Good. I was almost sure that you weren't going to work it out. Tell me, Human, what do you know of the beings known as the C'tan?"


	10. The dancers arrive

"Wake up

"Wake up…"

Cannis moaned and rolled over. He didn't want to go to work today. Maybe he could call the boss, pretend he was sick? There was a slight nagging feeling in the back of his head that something wasn't quite right with that thought, but he didn't care. He preferred this reality; it was warm and comforting.

"Sarge… wake up."

"No." He slurred the words, giving them an almost unrecognisable accent, but he didn't care. He was sixteen years old, and there was no way he was going to his job today. The Emperor, he thought with the typical irreverence of the immature, could take a running jump.

There was the sound of a sigh and somebody said "Do it".

That was when a tonne of ice-cold water landed straight across his slumbering figure. One nano-second later, he was wide awake and no longer sixteen years old. He was also very displeased, and showed it by landing one meaty fist in the mouth of someone his reeling senses decided was standing to the left. There was yelling involved.

Cannis swung around with the semi-drunken manner of one roused far too abruptly and glared at the other figures near his bed. It took a moment for him to realise that he recognised them, despite their doubled-over positions. Why could he hear laughter? Eventually his stunned mind pieced together the clues and worked out what the hell was going on. He looked down at the spluttering figure on the floor, and there was a sharp pain in his gut.

"Sam Wheln? How the hell…"

888

Khulan bit his lip, trying not to show his nervousness. He was dressed in his full suit of mesh armour, overlaid with several more solid pieces of protection and coloured in the black and gold of his kabal. Around him, a full dozen of the masked Incubi stood, impassive behind their bone white faceplates and segmented armour. Each of them stood at attention, bolt upright with their crackling Punisher glaives held across their chests.

A few paces to his right, Asdrubal Vect, Lord of the Black Heart, stood facing forwards with a grim face. Khulan repressed a shudder; no matter how many times he had reported to his Lord, Vect still created an instant air of fear in any who looked upon him. His eyes were totally pitiless black orbs, ancient as a dying star, and entirely at odds with his youthful appearance. Rumour had it that each day, the Lord of the Black Heart ingested a thousand tormented souls, part of the tribute paid to him by the rest of Commaragh, and they kept him forever young.

The Lord of the Dark City was one of the most dangerous beings Khulan had ever laid eyes on, and that was before you counted the score of robed Incubi standing behind him, each adorned with the pale cream robes that denoted a master. Or the mob of lithe wyches, who lounged at his feet like deadly predators, languid in the heat of day.

His Lord looked at him, and Khulan nodded in readiness. Both turned their attentions back to the flickering webway exit that made up the chambers far wall, waiting for their 'guests' to arrive. Even from his palace across the city, Vect had felt the power emanating from Khulan's tower, and had come to investigate. Actually, the Dracon would be very surprised if anybody in the city hadn't felt the power spewing from his one-time slave, and recognised it.

A reliable source had informed Khulan that every Mandrake in the city had disappeared suddenly, and rumours had already started that they were amassing a Dark Coven, to decide upon their course of action. That alone was proof that Cannis was something special, the last time the Mandrakes had done that was…

Well actually, he'd never heard of them doing that in his lifetime. And he had lived a very long time, by any standard. He wondered if Cannis was awake now. He'd directed his companions into his rooms, so the likelihood was yes. Especially given the mon-kei… human's appreciation for practical jokes, regardless of the situation.

His attention was suddenly arrested by a sudden burst of activity in the webway entrance. There was a sudden sense of motion in the vicinity of the entrance, even though there had been no indication of anything approaching down the tunnel. Six elegant figures strode out, moving with the kind of liquid grace that even made Khulan feel lumpy and slow. The newcomers were dressed in a bewildering variety of colours and shapes, and the Dracon winced to look upon them. They almost appeared to flow rather than walk, and as he watched several of them turned lazy cartwheels while walking. They possessed a certain sense of energy, something that just couldn't be held in total check.

Every last one of them was wearing masks, polished to a mirror-shine, and Khulan couldn't help but be wrong-footed but the illusion. He stared into the visor of the nearest, attempting to discern their actual features. Instead, all he saw was a subtly warped version of his own face, and looked away.

Lord Vect was not so easily off-put, and strode forwards to meet the visitors. He spoke without preamble, knowing full well what had drawn the Harlequins to Commaragh.

"Is it true?"

The lead figure laughed softly, inclining its concealed head to the Dark Eldar.

"You above all others should know that there is no such thing as total truth, Vect of Commaragh. Besides, how should we know what you are referring to?"

The voice was silky, and Khulan again felt off balance. He shook his head, wondering if the Harlequins were wearing some sort of hallucinogenic scent to confuse those they met with. Certainly, he was feeling an increasing sense of mocking humour building up inside him. Lord Vect, however, was clearly not in the mood for playing games.

"You know perfectly well what I mean. Is the one we know as Can-is the one from the Old Ones prophecy?"

The Harlequin smiled. Khulan didn't know how he was so sure of that, given the mirror-mask, but somehow he was sure of it.

"We believe so, but shall have to confirm it ourselves. Prophecies are very difficult things to interpret with any surety. But if our instincts are correct, then yes. This human is indeed the one designed to bring about the end of the star-gods. We simply have to persuade him of that."

Khulan couldn't help but interrupt. "How? How could anything bring about the end of the C'tan? Khaela Mensha Khaine couldn't even defeat the Nightbringer, so how could a single human destroy all of them?"

The mirror-mask turned to face him. "We are not sure, Dracon Khulan, but if anybody would know how, it would be the Old Ones."

888

Cannis shook his head.

"That can't be right. If what you're saying is true, then I… well, I don't even know what it would make me."

Pollo looked at him sadly.

"I don't know either, brother, but I know what I felt. Even if you can't remember it, for a brief moment, you wielded power like I have never seen before. I saw _daemons_ recoiling from you, damn it! Not even the Emperor could inspire total fear in a daemon, according to any source."

Cannis shook his head in denial. "No, you must be mistaken. If I have that sort of power, how come I can't do anything now? Why can't I just will myself out of Commaragh?"

Wheln spoke up at that point, seated on a small chair against the wall.

"Maybe it's like an involuntary thing? You know, like the legends of heroes who can't do anything unless they need to? Unless they're in mortal peril, or some such?"

Cannis started to shake his head again, and then froze. Across the other side of the room, Ship stood up in one fluid motion, pulled out his dagger and hurled it. Cannis had half a second to wonder what the _hell_ he was doing, when suddenly the pressure returned.

For about a foot all around him, the ground froze, beads of moisture appearing and solidifying. Thin cracks appeared in the dark walls, and there was a flash of white light. Something screamed.

At that point the door hissed open, and the group of Harlequins were treated to their first view of their potential saviour. He was standing in the middle of the room, white-faced, staring at something in the middle distance.

An Imperial Issue combat knife hung motionless in the air before him, blood-light gleaming off it's polished sides.


	11. Discoveries

2 Hours Later

_Note from the author:_

_Wow, this has been a long time coming. I'm not really going to apologise, because I probably won't update for a while. My GCSE's start, well, tomorrow. So I kind of have more important things on my mind than updating this._

_Anyhow, this chapter is where things start to get rather non-canonical. I experimented with my style, so this chapter contains absolutely no first-hand violence. Most of it is conversation-based, which I haven't really tried to do before, so I would welcome any feed-back. Also, if I have any of the background fluff wrong, just say so in the review and I'll try to correct. Anyhow, on with the show._

**2 Hours Later**

The pistol hovered in front of him, hanging unsupported in the still air. Cannis cocked his head and smiled faintly. He blinked his eyes and the weapon rotated, before slipping back inside his holster. He let it go and sighed in relief as the slight pressure inside him seemed to fade away. He'd been practicing for a while now, attempting to summon the power that so clearly rested inside of him. It was hard, but he had persevered. Now it appeared that his struggles were bearing fruit.

He had tried to will the gun to move, strained with all his might even. Nothing had happened, no matter how hard he'd tried. Then, exhausted, he'd simply settled back and waved his hand in a distracted fashion. The pistol had suddenly appeared in his grasp. He'd tried several more times, until he was sure of the technique. He'd been going about it wrong. It was one of life's fundamental truths: If you try and try and try to do something, it won't happen. The only way to do it was to believe with total confidence that it would happen, as though any other option was unthinkable.

Never-the-less, it was an awkward thing to pick up. The notion that something should suddenly start to disobey the laws of physics was one almost totally alien to a human mind. It was one of the reasons why warp-travel was so hazardous, why so many men went insane on them. In the Warp, things could happen that just wouldn't work in the realm of the physical. They were fundamentally different, and it was that difference, that oddity, that pushed men over the edge.

That was also the reason so many humans felt instinctively uncomfortable around psykers, even when they weren't using their abilities. A psyker made use of that otherness, that physical impossibility, and normal 'blunt' humans found that disturbing on the most fundamental level. And as for Navigators, who spent their entire lives peering into the Warp… well, Cannis was just glad he wasn't one of them.

The thing was, he really wasn't. The Harlequins had looked at him, and decided that he was most definitely not a psyker. They would probably be the best judges, he mused. As far as he could discern from their annoying riddle-speak, he was apart from both psykers and the rest of humanity in an altogether unheard of way. Psykers tapped into the power of the Warp for their abilities, taking the merest fragment of that elemental power and shaping it for their own ends. Granted, many of them were extraordinarily adept at such techniques, but they risked everything. By taking part of the Warp into themselves, they ran the risk of taking in one of the Warps denizens. And while training, discipline and a strong will could combat the possibility of possession, there was no way of being totally secure.

Cannis, as far as the dancers could tell, was different. He did not take a part of the Warp, he was one _with it._ His soul was inextricably linked to the warp as a whole, indeed it was almost a part of it. When he used his power, he didn't channel the Warp in a particular manner, it became part of him. That was why he was so dangerous. That was why he was being taken to Biel-tan. That was why the hope of two universes rested on his shoulders.

888

Pollo made no secret of the fact that he was deeply uneasy over his current situation. He was standing on the bridge of a Dark Eldar vessel, surrounded by close to a dozen of their heavily armed Incubi, which was currently travelling through a network of sub-real tunnels to a craft-world whose inhabitants were famous for their warlike ways. So, he had plenty of reason to be unsettled. And that was before you added Cannis into the equation.

Strangely enough though, all of the Eldar of the bridge were giving him a wide berth. Why, he didn't know, but he was grateful for it. The bridge was unpleasant enough, even disregarding the xenos stationed around it. It was a long oval space, with a series of glowing alcoves around the perimeter. In each alcove sat an Eldar in full mesh-armour, adorned with the ebony and gold patterning of the Black Heart. Each had had their eyes replaced with beautifully crafted augmentics, with glowed green as they peered into the holographic control panels in front of them.

The outer rim was separated from the inner space of the oval by a long rail. Pollo ran his hand over it and was not surprised to find that it was made of bone. Which species the bone had come from, he did not know, but Dark Eldar artificers had crafted it into one long, smooth beam. It was faintly soft and spongy to the touch, and still retained that oddly dry scent. He moved his hand away.

Seated in the middle of the oval, on a throne made of twisted metal, was Khulan. The Dracon was peering intently out into the Webway, seeming to be lost in his thoughts as the pale blue light washed over him. Yet even his dark eyes kept flickering towards Pollo.

He wanted some answers. Pollo walked around the perimeter of the room, before descending to the central area down steps carved into the likeness of skulls. He approached Khulan, keeping his hand on the pommel of his sword. The Dracon saw him coming and appeared to steel himself.

"I'm guessing that you are after some answers." His voice sounded resigned, the tone of someone who knows this must happen but still desires any other outcome. Pollo nodded.

"Yes. Answers to a great number of questions."

Khulan nodded again. He obviously didn't need to ask what the questions were, so Pollo stayed silent, letting the Alien marshal his thoughts. This was obviously something of great importance.

"Tell me, human, what do you know of the beings known as the 'Old Ones'?"

Pollo frowned faintly. This was not what he was expecting, but he decided to play along.

"They are a myth. An ancient race of founders, almost. There are legends of them all over the galaxy. It is said that they were the first race, the first sentient beings. There are stories that they created almost all the other races that exist today. But there was a great war and they vanished."

Khulan nodded. "Close enough."

Pollo blinked in shock. "Are you telling me… that they actually existed?"

The Alien nodded. Pollo felt his mouth drop open in shock and slammed it shut again. The Old Ones, real? It was an incredible idea. If that was true, then a great many of life's mysteries could be explained. Why so many Alien races were humanoid in shape, for instance. If there really was one creator race, then humanity was wrong in just about all of its assertions. The God-Emperor could not have created the human race, nor really guided them according to some great plan, not unless he was…

Pollo abandoned that line of thought quickly and moved on. A thought occurred to him. If the legends were true, then the Old Ones were akin to gods. And yet there had been a war, a war in heaven. What manner of being could challenge them?

"Tell me about the war."

Khulan's lip curled back faintly, and a mocking tone entered his voice. "Ah, yes. A human would be interested in battle." He appeared to notice the way that Pollo's fist had curled around the grip of his sword and adjusted his tone. "Yes, there was a war. The war in heaven, between the creators and the star-gods."

Pollo frowned again. He seemed to be doing that a lot, but this was just too much to take in. "Star Gods? You mean the C'tan?"

"Yes. The C'tan, and their mortal servants, the necrontyr. The Necrontyr had been waging a war against the Old Ones for some time, motivated mainly out of jealousy. They were blighted by radiation from their star, and lived short, twisted lives. The Old Ones were nigh-on immortal, and they possessed great cities of cool silver. So the Necrontyr attacked them. They developed a great knowledge of faster than light travel and weapons that could break things apart at the molecular level.

But the Old Ones, despite being outmatched in technology, had one major advantage. They had the Warp. In those days, the Warp was calm and peaceful, so the Old Ones could travel through it with impunity. They out-manoeuvred the Necrontyr and drove them back to their home world.

Then the C'tan arrived. The Necrons had summoned them, and bound them in bodies of necrodermis. They were incredibly powerful, and with their aid the war turned against the Old Ones."

Pollo shuddered to think of such a war, between the creators and the Star Gods. Such a conflict would have more than matched the Horus Heresy in its violence indeed probably far outstripped it. Creators… that gave him pause.

"Where do we come into it? You said that Humanity, Eldar and all the rest were created by the Old Ones. For what purpose?"

Khulan shrugged. "We have only a little idea. However, from all sources that we have found, the races populating this galaxy were created as weapons. The Old Ones were desperately outnumbered. They created the first Eldar to bolster their psychic arsenal. The Orks were a weapon, plain and simple. They love war on an instinctual level, and have technologic and medical ingenuity hard-wired into their brains. As for Humanity… well, I choose to believe that you were a last ditch weapon."

"What do you mean?"

"The Old Ones lost the war, human. The vibrant psyches of their created races spawned the first Gods of Chaos, and with the warp suddenly too dangerous to travel through the C'tan overpowered and destroyed them. Nearly destroyed the galaxy too, stripped it bare of nearly all life in their thirst for souls. That, in the end, was their downfall."

"Obviously they didn't strip it bare. After all, our mere existence is proof of that."

Khulan smiled. "Yes, human. Although they had not yet annihilated all other life in the galaxy, the C'tan realised that they soon would. They began to fight amongst themselves for those last scraps of essence. One of them in particular, physically the weakest, used its guile to deceive the other C'tan into believing that the greatest essence resided only within other C'tan. To a certain extent, it was right, and the Star-Gods fell upon each other in starvation."

"But the C'tan didn't kill each other off. There are certainly at least a few that remain."

The Dracon grinned again, revealing metallic teeth as sharp as any knife-blade. "Perceptive, for a human. Yes, a few of them still exist, but it is only a few. During the war, the C'tan numbered in the hundreds, each capable of slaying armies. Now, there are four, although only two are known to have awoken.

The weakest survived, and he is the one that has had most effect on the galaxy since. We call him Wethrinaer, or Deceiver. It was the most cunning, and the most treacherous.

There is 'Ksher, the Night-bringer. Just about every culture currently existing in the galaxy has a racial memory of it. It is Death, the skeletal and cloaked figure who reaps souls with its mighty scythe."

Pollo shuddered. He knew all too well what the Night-Bringer was. There was a legend of it on Necromunda, of the Lurker in the Darkness who hungered for the souls of all. Then he considered the Dracon's words.

"You said only two were awake. Why did they sleep, or indeed sleep still?"

"They came to their senses, and realised that the path that they were travelling down could only lead to their destruction. So, the four remaining C'tan took their deathless armies with them and slept. They have slept for time immemorial, through the evolution of Eldar and Humanity, through the Fall of the Eldar and birth of Slannesh. They slept through the age of Terra and the Horus Heresy. In short, they slept long enough for the Galaxy to repopulate, for the stars to once again become filled with vibrant, nourishing souls ready to be consumed. They awoke to find the Galaxy a very different place."

"In what way? What could have prevented them from rising again and bringing the galaxy to its end?

"Well, ironically, the main reason is Chaos. With all those trillions of souls, Chaos has grown immensely strong. The C'tan have never had any real knowledge of Warp science, so they have no way to permanently kill a daemon, or to stop more being spawned. Thus whenever they make a move, Chaos always finds a way to oppose them, either directly when the link between the Warp and the real is thin, or through their mortal servants when it's not."

Pollo shook his head in bemusement. "So wait, I want to get this straight. The two greatest threats to the future of the galaxy… are the only things that save the galaxy from the other? That is just…"

Khulan leaned back in his throne. "Yes, and the really ironic thing is that we must still wage unending war on them both to maintain our survival, but to actually win the war would spell the doom of us all."

The necromundan shook his head in disgust.

"But what does this have to do with Cannis?"

The Eldar turned serious. "I don't know, but I can guess. I already told you how the greatest enemy of the C'tan is Chaos. However, the Necrons have actually developed technology that would separate reality entirely from the Warp. The Pylons of Cadia are one example, and they are the main reason that the Eye of Terror hasn't expanded overly much during the ten thousand years since the heresy. There are Necron outposts nearby to just about any long-lasting warp storm, each equipped with the technology to stop the weakness spreading."

The significance of this dawned upon Pollo. "This is what you meant earlier, wasn't it? If the Warp was totally sectioned off from the Real, then civilisation would collapse overnight."

Khulan nodded, impressed despite himself at the human's insight. "Yes. I believe that the Old Ones foresaw this, and made plans. They knew they were going to lose the war, but they decided that it was their duty to make sure Evil such as the C'tan never overwhelmed the galaxy as a whole. They began a process that would one day result in the ultimate contingency plan. I think that was the reason they created humanity, as a cradle for their final weapon."

Pollo looked at the Dracon sharply. "You're talking about Cannis." It wasn't a question.

"Yes human. Your friend Cannis is the reason the human race exists. His birth was planned out billions of years ago to be the ultimate weapon. Cannis is destined to either save the galaxy from the C'tan, or fail and condemn us all to be food for an evil more ancient than the stars."

888

_Well, that was deep. As I said, any feedback would be very welcome, although I have one point to note. Please write more in a review than 'Wow' and the like. I do this for fun and to improve my writing style, so please say something a little more helpful._

_Anyway, GCSE's, here I come (crosses fingers)_

_Maugan Ra_


	12. Tested

Tested

_Author's note: Wow, GCSE's are a right pain in the backside. However, it turns out that I have enough time in my study leave to knock together this chapter, so there we go. _

_Pipboy – Yeah, the fluff is kind of vague. I just used it as it fitted my story, although I took most of my info from places like the Necron's codex etc. Still, thanks for the review._

_Muzikman – Thank you for the compliment. No actually, I fully intended to leave out the other two C'tan. The way my story is going, I don't want to completely wreck the idea of the Necrons as a race._

Tested

"Of, course, you realise that we will have to test this mon-keigh first, before we recognise any of your claims."

Khulan sighed and bowed his head. He had hoped to get past all of this nonsense, but then the Eldar of Biel-tan were definitely one of the most suspicious of all the craftworlds. Then again, he considered ruefully, it had been made abundantly clear that the support of the Harlequins was the only reason that his ship had not been blown out of space the second it showed up. No amount of high technology or guile would have saved them from the guns of an entire craftworld.

He glanced behind him, to where Cannis was leaning against one of the wraithbone walls. He seemed entirely unperturbed by the fact that he was sharing a room with a dozen of the most deadly warriors in existence. In fact, there was a look on his face that suggested he was almost amused by the concept. Khulan didn't mind admitting that Cannis scared the crap out of him, to put it simply. If he was what Khulan thought he was, then the Dracon had every right to be scared.

He looked back at the court. He had heard that Biel-tan was managed primarily by its warriors, and that the Farseers who were so prominent on other craftworlds were relegated to advisors here. Seated in front of him at a long, curved table were six members of the Court of the Young King. Every last one of them was a being known as an Autarch. Khulan reflected that while he and his kind still scoffed at the restrictive notion of the Path, where an Eldar dedicated themselves totally to perfecting one aspect of their life in turn, it did have its advantages. An Autarch was an Eldar who had walked one of the Path's of the Warrior for so long, that warfare had become first-nature to them. They were soldiers first and people second. Although, 'soldiers' was perhaps too bland a term for these warriors.

Given that all the members of the court were these ultimate warriors, he was fairly certain that he knew what form the test was going to take. He inclined his head respectfully, very aware of the phalanx of Exarchs stationed around the perimeter of the room.

"If that is what you desire."

He motioned behind him and Cannis straightened up, before pacing forwards to stand beside Khulan. The Dracon then retreated, leaving Cannis to face the hostile stares of six of the Galaxies finest warriors. He almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

888

Although he knew he should probably be nervous, Cannis felt nothing but a sense of absolute calm. Some part towards the rear of his mind wondered about that. These were Autarchs, Eldar known to be the finest warriors of their race, each capable of taking on whole legions of enemies. Why was he not afraid?

He knew the answer. The power was still within him; he could feel it flowing through his veins and surging in his mind like fire. It was incredible, and he was extremely glad of the confidence it gave him. It would not do to show fear in front of these warriors.

The Autarchs looked at each-other, and then one of their number stood up and walked around the edge of the table to come face to face with Cannis. The Autarch was female, dressed in a beautiful set of interlocking white plates, edged in gold. She was wearing a delicate mask of the breathtaking craftsmanship, depicting a face screaming in rage. There were a pair of shining swords strapped across her back, and with a slow movement she drew them. Her every movement seemed to be filled with an ultimate grace, as though everything around here was moving through thick treacle that could not touch her. She looked to the side of the room, where over Eldar in similar, but less elaborate, garb were waiting, and inclined her head to one of them.

Immediately, the Eldar drew a sword and threw it towards Cannis. He reached out and caught it, never removing his eyes from the Banshee in front of him. They nodded to each other, and attacked.

888

Khulan raised one eyebrow appreciatively. The display of martial skill taking place in front of him was impressive, to say the least. Somehow, Cannis was matching every move that the banshee made, even though he only had one sword to her two. Even his Eldar senses could not make out individual blows, only a sense of incredible speed. Where had the human learned to fight like that, he wondered?

Cannis was matching every blow intuitively, almost as though he knew the fighting style, as though he could predict what was going to happen. Khulan doubted that was possible, because everyone knew that each autarch had their own style of fighting that was entirely different from any other. And yet, somehow Cannis seemed to know off by heart the various combinations of blows that could follow a particular strike, and was thus able to adapt to them. The Dracon had a theory about that. It was said that all emotion and experience was reflected in the warp, and Cannis almost became the warp when he utilised his powers. Could it be that he had learned these moves because of the psychic echo of their use? It was an interesting idea. The speed of the combatants was incredible.

And yet, the human did appear to be purely defensive. No matter how fast he tried to get, or how much prior knowledge he appeared to have of the Autarch's style, he could not make an offensive move. Every iota of effort would appear to be concentrated into surviving the deadly hailstorm of blades.

Then, just as suddenly, the combat stopped. Cannis and the Banshee stood like statues, facing each other. Very slowly, Cannis turned his head and looked down at his left arm. There was a long, thin cut winding its way up the inside of his forearm. Beads of blood welled up slowly. Cannis looked back at the Eldar with raised eyebrows.

"That was impressive. Let's see how you cope when I really try."

The whole room went cold. Khulan took a step backwards, gazing in wonderment as Cannis stared to glow faintly, as though he contained an inner fire. The human raised his blade again.

888

The power surged through him, and it was exhilarating. Cannis raised the long balde, feeling his energy suffusing every tired muscle. The Banshee hadn't moved, but there was just enough change in her body-language for him to read her nervousness. He moved forwards, swinging the sword laterally.

The Banshee's response seemed stilted and slow, as though she was now the one moving in slow motion. His blade rebounded from a hasty parry from one sword, and he saw the other one arcing slowly towards his gut. A neat side-step put him out of the way of that one, and he re-commenced his attack. The Banshee was still moving slowly, and he could tell immediately that she was about to try for an overhead swing. Without even trying, he raised his sword to blow, but then noticed something odd. When he moved the blade, there was an odd sort of ripple effect in the space around it. With a sudden shock he realised that it was a slipstream, that he was moving so fast that he was parting the air. His blade clanged off of hers with a discordant noise, and he decided to finish the duel. He let the sword drop from his right hand and, moving so fast that he felt his hands heat up from the friction, punched her in the chest.

Everything snapped back into real time as the Autarch flew back through the air, crashing into the table that her brethren were sat at with a clatter. The remaining autatchs looked at him coldly. One of them, the one garbed in bulky black plate and wearing a skull-mask, spoke to him.

"And let us see how you deal with this type of weapon."

He reached under the table and produced a small black cube. Cannis felt his eyes widen in recognition. He tried to leap forwards to intercept, but it was too late. The Autarch tapped a small panel on one side of the cube, and Cannis collapsed to the floor as the untouchable field spread out into the room and severed his connection to the Warp. Everything went dark, and he cursed. He should have seen something like that coming…


	13. Insane proposal

Damn, I hate English literature

_Damn, I hate English literature. Still, at least that's the last time I'll every have to read that blasted poetry anthology. You know, I'm actually getting the inspiration to write more during the exams than before? Eh, I guess it must be some kind of coping strategy._

_Muzikman – Yeah, the 'the' shouldn't be in that sentence. Ah well. Anyway, thanks for the review and I was experimenting with ways to describe a fight._

_Felix – Yeah, Biel-tan are pretty sweet. After all, they are basically an entire army of martial artists._

_Note to everyone: I have now got the rest of this story sorted out perfectly in my head. If you are any good at deducing things, then this chapter should allow you to work out exactly what's going to happen. Happy guessing!_

Insane proposal

The blackness rolled in, accompanied by a wave of weakness and nausea that Cannis hadn't believed it possible to feel. It seemed to swirl around him, coaxing him to give up and sleep. Why not? Without his power, he was just another child. A poor, frightened child that had just had its crutch kicked away. Yet, despite that, Cannis stayed on his feet. He could still feel the power within him, and suddenly realised that letting it flow out was what was generating the Nausea. He reined in the energy and the sickness went away, although it didn't take the fatigue with it.

With a conscious effort, Cannis pulled himself upright. Every muscle in his body was screaming out for rest, but he couldn't give in. He guessed that without the un-real energy flowing through his veins, his body was no feeling the strain of his fight with the Banshee. Somehow the power had invigorated him, kept him going beyond any reasonable human limit, but now that it had been banished he felt weakened. That just wouldn't do.

He looked back at the Autarchs, noticing with a slight hint of smugness that they were all sitting up in shock. He supposed that seeing what they assumed to be a psyker still being able to move in such a potent Untouchable field would be un-nerving. He was sure now that the cube was a field generator, a device specifically designed to prevent any psychic activity within their field of effect. There were humans who possessed this ability as well, known generally as 'blanks' due to the disturbing emptiness they essentially were, but he'd never been on the receiving end of such a nullifying effect. Somehow, he'd been convinced that he would be immune to such things.

He could still see the cube, and to his mind it was vibrating slightly and giving off waves of some energy that seemed to render everything around him dull and wan. Just looking at it created a throbbing head-ache in the back of his skull.

"Could you turn that off, please?" Even to him his voice sounded oddly strained.

The skull-masked autarch nodded slowly and pushed the small button on the top of the device again. Colour seemed to return to the world, and the headache vanished like mud under a mountain stream. The power welled up inside of him again but he pushed it back down. He had to learn how to deal with things without it. After all, as had just been amply demonstrated, he couldn't always rely on it being there. He looked at the council again, appreciating what they had been attempting to prove.

"I'm guessing that wherever I end up going, there are going to be more of those types of devices around?" The Eldar nodded their heads and Cannis sighed. He was evidently going to need some assistance to carrying out whatever it was he was supposed to do, seeing as he couldn't rely on being able to do it himself. Not only that, he was going to need some way to compensate for the feeling of weakness that would probably appear whenever his power was suddenly stripped away.

One idea sprang immediately to mind, but it was definitely not one he liked. He looked back up at the Autarchs.

"O.K, Point taken. Now, I know this has something to do with the C'tan and their goal of separating the Warp from reality, which would really be bad for everyone. However if, as everyone seems to be suggesting, my purpose is to stop them before they accomplish this, I need to know one thing. Where are they?"

One of the Autarchs rose smoothly to his feet. Somehow Cannis knew immediately that this one was connected to the Fire Dragon shrine. He certainly looked the part, clad as he was in strong plate armour of a bright orange colour, replete with stylised flame shapes etched out in gold along the edges. His helm was tall and fluted, and across his back was slung some form of long tube-like weapon with a tapered nozzle. The Dragon spoke, every word resonating with a peculiar sizzling quality.

"In short, we don't know. It would be logical to conclude that the more critical sites for this project of theirs would be sited on some of their strongest tomb-worlds, but there are far too many of those for anybody to be precise. However, no army has ever managed to attack a fully functioning and operational Tomb World. Generally, the only hope has always been to catch the Necrontyr while the greatest possible amounts of their warriors were still slumbering. The one thing we can be sure of is that wherever the C'tan are planning their great strategy, nothing will be sleeping."

Cannis mulled this over, wishing the softly insistent voice in his mind would go away. There was only one force in the Galaxy that could ever have a hope of succeeding in a direct assault on a fully functioning tomb-world. Only one force that could grant him enough strength to survive when his power was gone. Only one force that would know for sure where the Necron stronghold was, and that could provide enough of an allied force to assist him in any meaningful way when it came to facing down the C'tan. He grimaced, knowing full well that no-body in the room would be pleased with the proposal he was going to make. Yet, there was no other way.

"I know how we can find out. And I know what we have to do in order to have enough force to launch a direct attack on the Necrons."

Every eye in the chamber turned on him. Everybody was waiting to hear what he was going to suggest. And, judging from the way Pollo's mouth was hanging open, only one person had any idea of what the answer was.

"What else," he asked, quietly relishing the looks he knew he was about to receive, "What else but Chaos?"


	14. Dealing with the Devils

Dealing with the Devil(s)

_Well, this is certainly contradicting my earlier statement about slackening off the story. Still, I won't be getting near a computer for a week and thus decided to post this before I forgot. I'm going to an 'adventure training camp' with the Air Training Corps. I've gone before, and it is hilarious. Although Camo-cream is near impossible to get out of hair._

_Potatoes-ate-my-soul – Yeah, that is decidedly bad history. I know the Biel-tan probably would of whined, but I have almost no ability to write someone whining without hitting something. Bad sister-related memories._

_DocNitro – Yeah, an Imperium-Eldar alliance would be kinda old. I was leading up to the Chaos alliance in the Pollo-Khulan conversation, as I just like Chaos. I am very pleased that the final sentence worked as desired._

_Muzikman – Hmm, not sure about the twist (I cannot do a convincing tyrant to save my life), but other than that you have it pretty spot-on. Oh, except the 'defeat the Chaos Gods' part. Cannis is good, but not that good._

Dealing with the Devil(s)

Cannis stood still for a moment, letting the coolness of the web-way flow over him. It held a particular quality, totally beyond identification, but present none-the-less, that soothed the soul. He grinned ruefully, knowing full well that his soul was in more need of soothing than most peoples. Especially given what he was about to do. It was funny, he thought, that just a few weeks ago he would have shot anybody who had suggested this, but then a lot can change in a few weeks. He looked behind him, noting the tense expressions on the faces of his comrades. All three of his human friends were here, along with the Dracon Khulan and a dozen high-ranking Eldar Exarchs. The council were sensible enough to go no-where near this place. It had been unanimously agreed that Cannis be the only one to leave the web-way, given the danger inherent in what he was about to do. On that note, he thought; better to get on with it.

He turned his attention back to the exit in front of him, noting with some amusement the great number of warding runes and sigils etched into the wraithbone arch. The Eldar had obviously wanted to make it abundantly clear how suicidal it would be to step through the arch. Cannis knew why. He could feel it, even from the limbo of the web-way. There was a sense of hunger, ancient and insatiable, clawing at the other side of the archway. It gnawed at his mind, filling him with all manner of foul promises. That fitted with what he'd been told.

According to the council, behind this exit lay one of the hellish places known as the Crone worlds. It had once possessed a name, and been one of the most beautiful places in the galaxy, populated by millions of Eldar in the heart of their huge empire. Then, the Fall had come. The Warp-Real space overlap that humans knew as the Eye of Terror had erupted into being right in the centre of the Eldar realm, and billions of souls had been dragged screaming into the Warp, fuelling the birth of the Chaos God, Slannesh. Eldar civilisation had collapsed overnight, the only survivors being those conservative elements that had left the Empire of their own accord aboard their monolithic Craftworlds.

Now, the Crone worlds were Hell incarnate, horrific places where daemons walked freely amid torrents of pure Warp-stuff under a tortured sky, and the laws of Physics twisted fluidly, subject only to the will of the strong. There was one behind this door, and he was visiting its masters.

888

Pollo watched uneasily as Cannis looked at the door, seeming to hesitate in the face of the potent runes and the whispers that Pollo could hear scratching against his mind. He felt like yelling out, like screaming for Cannis to come back, to find some other way around this problem. And yet…he knew that there _was_ no other way. He recalled the conversation that he'd had with Khulan on board the ship, and knew that this was the only option. A fully functioning Necron tomb-world had to be one of the hardest places in existence to attack, short of Holy Terra itself. Chaos, for all that it was vile and evil, was undeniably vastly powerful. If there was anything that could overwhelm a tomb-world, that would be it.

Still, Pollo was understandably nervous about the situation. Throughout his entire life, the one constant that he'd had to hold onto was that Chaos was evil, and that it would corrupt anything not shielded by the sanctity of the Golden Throne. Pollo was not, relatively speaking, a particularly pious man. In Necromunda, a pistol and a good blade had seemed a far greater protection against the monsters in the Dark than a nebulous faith in some far-off power. Still, standing here, physically able to feel the corrosive touch of Chaos grinding at his soul, Pollo decided that perhaps faith in the Emperor wasn't as pathetic a defence as he had supposed. Under his breath, he began to mutter a stream of faithful litanies, learnt in childhood and unexpectedly revealed to posses some worth after all. Several of the Eldar glanced at him, but none of them made a comment.

Cannis seemed to shake his head slightly, before taking three brisk paces forwards under the arch-way. There was a faint hiss, and then his one-time comrade vanished. Pollo didn't know what Cannis had become, but anything that could step willingly into that sort of filth was not the same man he had met in the Arena of Commaragh.

888

The heat was the most startling change. Stepping from the soft cool of the web-way in the hellish heat of this place was the first thing that he noticed. He grimaced to himself. Hellish was most definitely the word. Cannis took a few more paces forwards, walking over some form of gravel desert, a wasteland that stretched to the horizon. It didn't feel like sand underfoot, though, more like some sort of semi-solid jelly. He looked down, noting that each individual grain of sand had something written upon it in miniscule script. He reached down and picked one out at random. It read Samuel Wheln. He threw it away.

There was a strange sort of wind howling over the land that sounded like a faint moaning. Oddly-coloured clouds raced across the sky, the path of each one apparently unaffected by the direction of the wind or its fellows. He looked back down, and was surprised to find himself standing close to the edge of a large cliff. Hadn't this been a plain a moment ago? There was a faint tittering, like the laughter of the insane, and Cannis spun around. There was a sense of movement, like there were things lurking in the periphery of your vision until a moment before you looked. He shook his head, determined not to let this strange place get the better of him.

Determined, he strode to the edge of the cliff and looked down. What confronted him was an ocean of pure Chaos. The cliff fell away for an infinite distance, and down below was a seething tide of oddly coloured light. It changed hue at random, and in it Cannis could see a legion of creatures that he did not want to get any closer to. The moaning wind picked up a notch, and now Cannis could hear faint words in it. They slid over each-other like oily serpents.

"_Brothers… we have a new mortal to play with. Hello, little human… a long way from home, aren't we?"_

Several of the oddly shaped creatures from below started to rise towards him. He blinked in surprise. If he was estimating the distance to the bottom correctly, then the creatures were wafting upwards at several thousand miles a second. Then again, he considered, relying on his senses probably wasn't the best thing to do here.

"I want to talk." He was amazed at how calm his voice sounded. More than that, he was surprised at how calm he felt in general. A normal man would be shrieking in the throes of insanity by this point. Yet he felt nothing but a slight trepidation. The voices in the wind picked up on this.

"_We have a bold one here… What do you want to say, little mortal, before we take your soul for our plaything, hmm? It has been a long while since we have had such fun."_

Cannis sighed to himself. He really didn't have time for all of this mockery. He didn't know when the C'tans plan was due to be implemented, but he was willing to bet that he didn't have anything like enough time to play games here. Resolved now, he reached inside himself and summoned the power. It coursed through him, as hot as fire, laced with traces of darkness, and he grunted slightly at the strength of it. In hindsight, employing psychic powers in the Eye of Terror was possibly not the most intelligent thing to do.

It had the desired effect though. The voices all stopped talking, and the rising daemons from below paused and hovered, unsure of how to proceed. There was a long, pregnant pause. Then a voice started again, thankfully far less mocking.

"_You… what do you want?"_

Cannis stood at the edge of the cliff, feeling the power course through him. This time, when he spoke, it was with an unconscious strength that made several of the daemons recoil.

"What I want is to talk. Specifically, to the emissaries of the Powers. Take me to them."

With that, he took another step and plunged into the abyss.

888

Pollo looked up sharply, breaking off his mantra in shock. They had all moved further back along the path, and thankfully the faint grating whispers had subsided a bit. But they had still been there, up until about a second ago. He looked back down the pathway, just in time to see the rune-inscribed archway pulse faintly. You didn't need to be a psyker to know that something big had just gone down on the other side of the archway. Something that had drawn away the attention of all the daemonic whispers.

Nor did you have to be a psyker to work out what that something was.

"Cannis…"

888

The daemon world had changed again. Where as before he had been standing on the edge of an infinite cliff, now he was suddenly waiting in the centre of some kind of audience hall. Cannis smiled thinly to himself, relieved that the Daemons had actually obeyed him and not just let him fall. For a moment there he'd been sure they would.

He looked around, assessing the area. The hall was vaguely circular, although there was something odd about the way that it lined up. The wall was perfectly smooth, and yet it also had corners. He decided not to wonder about that too much. Just inside the periphery of the room was a long, rounded bench, set with four seats at every ninety degrees. That presumably meant that all four of the powers were sending representatives. He'd know not to be so stupid as to request that the Powers themselves came. He might be insanely powerful by mortal standards, but nothing in the universe could stand up to being surrounded by four Chaos Gods.

There was a loud creak, and a door on one side of the room opened up. Cannis frowned, briefly puzzled given that there hadn't been a door there previously. All such concerns left his mind as the first emissary strode in.

The emissary was tall and slender, vaguely humanoid and clad in intricate black armour that contrasted shockingly with its pale pink flesh. For him, it had taken on a female figure, and Cannis raised one eyebrow at the seductive way that the Daemon walked to its place at the table. There was nothing seductive about the coiling whip at its side, which seemed to writhe and move with a life of its own. The daemonette slouched languidly in a chair that had suddenly appeared for it, which looked disturbingly like it had been woven out of human skin. He looked it in the face, and was surprised to note that it had shaped its facial features to resemble Alshin. Now why would it do that? Although he had to admit that Alshin did not have such bottomless eyes, or such needle-thin fangs. He looked away, hearing a faintly mocking laughter at his discomfort.

The second emissary to enter the hall didn't even bother with a door. It simply appeared in its seat with a faint pop and a whiff of brimstone. Cannis squinted at it, trying to determine what exactly it was. At first glance, his eyes saw an ice-blue falcon, with steely claws and a faint white aura surrounding it. Yet, as he concentrated, he could make out at least a dozen different identities in there, superimposed like shadows on a poorly taken pict-shot. There was a fruit, a man, a tree, something formless and menacing. The Hawk-meld turned to regard him and with a sharp crack changed to become a human, with flinty eyes and elaborate blue tattoos. The after-images were still there, but Cannis chose to ignore them for the sake of his sanity.

The Third Daemon was quite honestly the most repulsive thing Cannis had ever laid eyes on. It took the form of a large slug, dripping with all manner of oddly-coloured slime that ate into the floor as it squelched along. And yet, grafted to the top of it was a sickly human torso, complete with a sunken face. It glided over to be opposite the Hawk-man meld, and the two glared at each-other with a mutual apathy. The Slug seemed to be back-lit by a faint shadow, as though the light that passed close to it was somehow tinted and corrupted.

The Final Emissary entered the hall with a booming stomp, throwing open a pair of heavy brass doors that had suddenly appeared in the wall opposite the seductive daemonette. It was just about the arch-typical daemon, the roaring beast portrayed in just about every depiction of hell that existed in the Imperium. Large horns jutted from a strangely triangular skull, and yellow eyes shone, like those of some nocturnal predator. There was no weapon carried in the heavily muscled arms, but everything about the Daemon radiated concentrated lethality. It had no skin, instead exposing slabs of red muscle to the open air, dripping crimson blood that evaporated on contact with the floor. The Daemon took its place, draping an intricate skull-weave cloak over the back of the metal throne and glaring at Cannis.

The human smiled faintly, which was perhaps not the best thing to do whilst under the scrutiny of four extremely powerful daemons. It was not a humorous smile, but rather the smile of someone who is rapidly re-evaluating an opinion of their own sanity. He cleared his throat, took a second to control any tremor in his voice, and started to speak.

"How much do you know about the C'tan?"

888


	15. Gifts of Chaos

Whew, only three more exams to go

_Whew, only three more exams to go. I am so glad the chemistry paper is over. I revised so hard for that, but did one thing that I'd recapped come up on the paper? What do you think?_

_Felix the eeveetrainer – Well, if he was, he could hardly find a more comprehensive way of doing it now, could he?_

_Muzikman – Glad I made the Emissaries clear. Oh, and I just re-read the relevant section of my chapter and realised how it might look like a Matrix Parody. To anyone who thinks so: It was NOT! Anyway, I'm glad you liked it._

_Darth Malleus – Your wish is my command (within reason). Here's the chapter._

Gifts of Chaos

The talks, such as they were, did not last long, for which Cannis was profoundly grateful. No matter how much he had changed, or been changed, there was something about daemons that triggered some sort of primordial fear instinct in the back of his mind. They were otherworldly in the most literal sense, and his mortal consciousness still had problems dealing with that. It kept trying to impose laws on what it saw, laws of physics or morality, but neither could last for long without being shattered. The daemons were just too different for his mind to accept.

Still, as disturbing as they were, the daemons certainly possessed a great deal of knowledge. They knew all about the C'tan, and what would happen should their plan of separating Warp from reality succeed. He wasn't surprised, given that the literal existence of all Warp-born sentience's depended of the emotions that leaked between the two worlds, emotions which the C'tan would eliminate.

They knew just how close that plan was to completion, and had apparently been waging war with the Necrons for Millennia to slow their progress. And they were very aware that all they could do was delay them, just as they had realised that Cannis was perhaps their only way of actually stopping them. They had revealed to him that several remote sections of the galaxy had already been pruned away from the Warp by the vast monolithic pylons that dotted the surface of the tomb worlds, creating corresponding pockets of 'dead-space' within the warp.

And they were all too aware that Cannis needed their help to defeat them.

888

Cannis finished speaking, and looked around at the assembled Daemon princes with interest. They looked, as far as he could gauge their emotions, thoughtful. It was the emissary of tzeentch that spoke first, rising from its place at the table and looking Cannis in the eye. When it spoke, its voice appeared directly in his head without any movement of the lips, save the luminous tattoos that writhed and glowed. It sounded ancient and cold, like a blast of wind from the abyss.

"Lord Tzeentch accepts your terms, mortal. He pledges to you every daemon that serves him, and grants you the power to summon them. It is accepted that the C'tan know as Deceiver will attempt to trick and confuse you, so my Lord shall stand watchful, ready to clear your vision of deceit."

With that, the shadow-man seemed to dissolve, before taking on the form of a thin mist. It hovered there for a second, before suddenly pouring towards Cannis. He started in alarm, but resisted the urge to lash out as the ethereal mist connected with his chest. For an instant, nothing seemed to happen. Then his vision exploded.

Everything suddenly seemed to have a sudden clarity, and yet was also translucent. He could see the very fabric of existence, and read the skeins of fate. They took the form of billions of microscopic threads, somehow laced not just around the universe but actually through it. He staggered, and felt his skin change hue. He raised one hand to his face and wasn't surprised to see that it was glowing with luminous patterns, exactly like those that had adorned the herald.

He knew what was coming next. Off to his left (a description that suddenly seemed infinitely crude for what it was trying to describe), the Servant of Nurgle straightened up. It could not stand like the Herald of Tzeentch, not with its slug-like body, but it pulled itself up as well as it could. It also spoke, although this time Cannis could hear it in the conventional sense. His ears recoiled from the thick, syrupy sounds of death, but they heard all the same.

"The deathless ones are powerful, and only the full limit of the power you possess can overcome them. Unfortunately, your feeble human frame cannot support the full force of your power for anywhere near long enough. This, the Grandfather shall rectify."

It too seemed to disintegrate, dissolving down into a formless shape. Suddenly, the shape expanded, filling his tortured ears with the sounds of a million buzzing wings. A great swarm of flies, each one fat with corruption, rose into the air and poured towards him. They settled all over his skin, forming living armour of furry plate all over him, and Cannis shuddered uncontrollably at the sensation of their endless scratching legs and obscenely soft gossamer wings. Then, just as suddenly, the sensation was gone. Shaking, barely able to stand, Cannis looked down. His flesh had changed again, taking on a pale grey hue behind the writhing patterns. And it felt strong. Every last particle of tiredness, of stress or exhaustion drained away. He moved one arm up, and felt absolutely no energy required. The emissary had made him resilient, entirely immune to fatigue. Despite himself, he shuddered. The one thing holding him back when his powers had fully manifested in Commaragh had been the knowledge that his body could not survive that level of energy being channelled through it. Now it could, and Cannis wondered fearfully what he might do.

The servant of Khorne rose next, blood still hissing in rivulets down its bare-muscled form. It's was the voice of oblivion, like a great brass horn in the ear, and yet also the freezing void of space.

"Any battle requires soldiers, and this shall be the mightiest battle ever fought. So, my lord Khorne shall gift you with the greatest soldiers in existence. The foot soldiers of the Blood God shall be yours to command, and your strength shall match theirs."

With that the daemon seemed to explode, transforming in an instant to a bloody pool on the floor. The red liquid moved with a mind of its own, pouring under the table with all the strength of a great river and pooling around his feet. Slowly, as the roots of an ancient oak soak up water from the soil, the blood flowed into his body and rose. Cannis shuddered, feeling the sudden unearthly strength that filled him and powered his muscles. It rested at the back of his mind, a red haze that screamed for him to rend and kill.

A soft, rolling laugh echoed around the chamber, and Cannis spun on one heel to face the last of the Daemons. The daemonette tittered like a school-girl, and fixed him with eyes that burned with temptation. Its voice was soft and seductive.

"I see you. My master sees you. There is no secret that Slannesh does not know. He knows what you fear. You fear yourself. You fear your power. You fear that you might not be able to restrain yourself from harming your _friends_." The daemonette smiled, revealing ebony fangs.

"Well, fear not, little mortal. The darkling prince can grant precision as well as excess."

This one did not flow into him as the others had. It stood, revealing the full length of its alabaster body, and strode forwards until it was face-to-face with him. Alshin's face… Why did it have…

The Daemonette touched him, feather-light, on the forehead, and everything dissolved as the power of the last of the Chaos Gods melded with his soul.


	16. Unexpected arrival

Fairly short chapter this time, but I have realised that I update a lot more regularly if I limit myself to short 'portions'

_Fairly short chapter this time, but I have realised that I update a lot more regularly if I limit myself to short 'portions'. I wrote this from scratch in a couple of hours, but it fits into my plan and the idea was just too cool to leave out._

_Felix the eeveetrainer – Problems when this is over? Personally, I think he has problems right now. After all, the chaos gods don't really give out such strength free of 'charge'. There will be hell to pay (literally) later, mark my words._

_Muzikman – Yeah, I see what you mean about perhaps he is a little 'too' powerful. Still, I have a reason for this. The C'tan are basically the ultimate power in the physical universe. They have never actually taken to the field entirely, the Necrons have only ever summoned manifestations of them in the past. An actual C'tan is going to be seriously powerful. After all, the Nightbringer singly-handily imposed a fear of death in just about every sentient race in the galaxy. Think about it._

_General warning here: I have decided that this story is not going to end with sunshine and happiness. There will be pain and horrible stuff aplenty, don't worry. This is basically because the 'happy ending' is just entirely against the whole 40k setting. If you don't like it, tough._

Unexpected arrival

Pollo looked up sharply, breaking out of the reverie that he had fallen into. For a moment he couldn't quite place what it was that had disturbed him, but then he saw the Eldar. For the entirety of their wait thus far, every last Exarch and even Khulan had remained shock still, expressionless, regarding the archway. Pollo had presumed that they were all mulling over the possible consequences of what Cannis had tried… no, evidently succeeded, to do. The Eldar had always struck him as a people that worried far too much about the future. Then again, he would probably worry about it if he could actually foretell it.

Now however, all of the Eldar were staring in a kind of horrified wonder at the scene outside the translucent membrane. Although Pollo had absolutely no wish to look at the broiling maelstrom of the warp, he felt himself almost compelled by curiosity as to what held their attention so effortlessly. Without meaning to, he glanced in the same direction, and understood.

There was a figure hanging there, floating just outside the webway, and it was looking at them. There had been plenty of other creatures peering in at them every other time Pollo had ventured into this extra-dimensional tunnel network, but none of them had ever displayed more than a passing interest. This one was hanging there, perfectly still, and regarding them all steadily. It was without doubt trying to get their attention.

Pollo could not make out the Daemons shape exactly, but he got the distorted picture of something remarkably humanoid, although with a pair of great wings sprouting from its back. The ethereal creature drifted forwards slightly, and laid one clawed hand against the membrane surface. What happened next shocked Pollo far more than anything he was expecting. The daemon began to write on the surface. As it moved its claw over the surface of the tunnel, faint lines remained there for a few moments before fading. Although that meant they could not see the entire message at once, its meaning was none-the-less horribly clear to all of them.

_Return to your craftworld. Cannis shall meet you there._

Its task complete, the daemon removed it hand and drifted away again, leaving both human and Eldar to stare at each-other in shock. There was a heavy pause. Then, they started to run.

888

Several light minutes aft of the mighty craft world Biel-tan, space was beginning to distort. The Eldar had long possessed a fearsome reputation among the ships of the Imperial Navy for the efficiency and range of their detection systems, which generally made it nigh-on-impossible to surprise them. However, this anomaly had totally evaded detection up until now, something which the technicians aboard the craftworld were at a total loss to explain. As far as they could tell, at one singular point on the far edge of the local star system, space was simply beginning to fold in on itself. The sensor readings made no sense.

Rapid cross-checks were carried out, the Eldar manning the craftworlds systems hurriedly comparing their readings with every last celestial event on record. The results came back just as the Khulan, Pollo and their companions arrived back on the craftworld through the massive central entrance to the webway. There had only ever been one event at which the craftworld had been present, that even slightly matched the readings that were being given. Only one event, but the memory of it was etched indelibly into the mind of every Eldar, for it had heralded the fall of their civilisation.

The creation of the Eye of Terror.

888

Pollo stared at the screen in horrified fascination, watching as the long-range viewers mounted near the aft of the monolithic craftworld struggled to accurately interpret the frankly bizarre events occurring much too close for comfort. All that the screen could show was a perfect rendition of the star-field behind the anomaly. And yet, there was something wrong about it.

It reminded Pollo of a reflection in a puddle of water, and how the image is distorted by ripples caused by the dropping of a stone. There was a small area in the middle of the picture, around which light appeared to be being refracted. Logically Pollo knew that was impossible, as there was nothing in space that could distort an image like that, but it was happening all the same. Not only that, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he knew why that was happening.

He was proved right. With a sound like wet parchment tearing (despite the fact that he knew that, without air, there could be no sound) and the stink of brimstone (no matter how impossible that was), the distortion vanished. There was half a second of total silence, and then chaos reigned as the Eldar registered what their eyes were telling them.

Something was just sitting there, floating in the void as though it had never been anywhere else, and yet Pollo was sure that it had not been present when he had entered the Webway with Cannis and the others. It was ominously dark, and yet somehow ablaze with a power that seemed totally at odds with what his senses were telling him. The first thing that suggested itself to the eye was a double pyramid shape, one on both top and bottom. At first he though that it was just a giant diamond shape, but then he saw the centre. The two pyramids were separated by a large X of black metal, nestled snugly between them. The whole thing had an inexplicably organic look to it, and it was with a surge of dread that Pollo recognised the design. He had never seen one before, unsurprisingly, but there were legends surrounding this object and its twins that matched anything in the galaxy for sheer terror. Judging from the panic now residing in the immediate area, he was not alone in his recognition. Khulan hissed something to himself, his face a mask of dread.

"A Talisman of Vaul…"

Pollo didn't recognise the name, but that was to be expected. Doubtless the Eldar knew those devices by an entirely different name, but humanity had long know them by a far simpler identification. For centuries they had been the mightiest weapons the Imperium possessed, until the ruinous events of the Gothic War. Then, as their shadow fell across a dozen doomed worlds, their terrified victims had whispered their names in disbelieving horror.

"A Blackstone Fortress…"


End file.
